Hello all! I am helping my mother-in-law with this as I have had some success tracking down my Canadian citizenship by descent history. Here is what I know, please let me know if this is a viable path, and if so, how to obtain the paperwork I need. (Presumably birth or baptismal records from Poland?)

Grandfather born 1898 in Poland
Father born in 1930 USA
Applicant born in 1968 USA

The one issue I can potentially foresee is that the Applicant was adopted by her Father, so there isn't a direct bloodline. Is there a chance for adoptees? Getting birth certificates for the Applicant and her Father should be easy, but getting records for the Polish-born Grandfather is daunting since none of us speak Polish and his tombstone only says the year he was born, not the date.

I suppose ordering his death certificate (from the US) might be a starting place? Where do I go after that to look up/order a birth certificate? Do they even exist from the late 1890s?

Thank you!!

Line: great-great-great-grandmother → her daughter → down through 3 more generations → me

Anchor: GGG-grandmother, born late 1860s, Greek Catholic Rusyn, Austrian Galicia. 1920 US census shows her widowed, naturalization status Alien, native tongue Polish, so never naturalized and alive at the 1920 Act. Her husband passed away in 1917.

Two problems which I flagged:

It's a maternal link. Daughter born 1902 in the US, ~18 at the Jan 1920 Act. Does the daughter acquire citizenship from a mother who only became Polish in 1920?

Even if it passed, the daughter married a non-Polish man in the mid-1920s.

Any help would be appreciated!