THE DATA
The Vineland Training School has for two years employed field workers.
These are women highly trained, of broad human experience, and interested
in social problems. As a result of weeks of residence at the Training
School, they become acquainted with the condition of the feeble-minded.
They study all the grades, note their peculiarities, and acquaint
themselves with the methods of testing and recognizing them. They then go
out with an introduction from the Superintendent to the homes of the
children and there ask that all the facts which are available may be
furnished, in order that we can know more about the child and be better
able to care for him and more wisely train him.
Sometimes all necessary information is obtained from the one central
source, but more often, especially where the parents are themselves
defective, many visits to other homes must be made. Parents often send the
field worker to visit near and distant relatives as well as neighbors,
employers, teachers, physicians, ministers, overseers of the poor,
almshouse directors, etc. These must be interviewed and all the
information thus obtained must be weighed and much of it verified by
repeated visits to the same locality before an accurate chart of the
particular child’s heredity can be made.
In determining the mental condition of people in the earlier generations
(that is, as to whether they were feeble-minded or not), one proceeds in
the same way as one does to determine the character of a Washington or a
Lincoln or any other man of the past. Recourse is had to original
documents whenever possible. In the case of defectives, of course, there
are not many original documents. Oftentimes the absence of these, where
they are to be expected, is of itself significant. For instance, the
absence of a record of marriage is often quite as significant as its
presence. Some record or memory is generally obtainable of how the person
lived, how he conducted himself, whether he was able to make a living, how
he brought up his children, what was his reputation in the community;
these facts are frequently sufficient to enable one to determine, with a
high degree of accuracy, whether the individual was normal or otherwise.
Sometimes the condition is marked by the presence of other factors. For
example, if a man was strongly alcoholic, it is almost impossible to
determine whether he was also feeble-minded, because the reports usually
declare that the only trouble with him was that he was always drunk, and
they say if he had been sober, he would have been all right. This may be
true, but on the other hand, it is quite possible that he was
feeble-minded also.
After some experience, the field worker becomes expert in inferring the
condition of those persons who are not seen, from the similarity of the
language used in describing them to that used in describing persons whom
she has seen.
In Deborah’s case, the woman first visited was the one who interested
herself in the child and its mother when the latter had just given birth
to her baby in the almshouse. From this woman was learned the subsequent
history of Deborah’s mother as given in the first part of this
description. But references, supplied by her, soon led to further
discoveries. The present family was found living within twenty miles of
what was afterwards learned to be its ancestral home and in a region that
was neither the slums of a city nor the wild desolation of the extreme
rural community, but rather in the midst of a populous farming country,
one of the best districts in the State. Thorough and carefully conducted
investigations in the small town and among the farmers of this region
showed that the family had always been notorious for the number of
defectives and delinquents it had produced; and this notoriety made it
possible to trace them back for no less than six generations.
It was determined to make a survey of the entire family and to discover
the condition, as far as possible, of every person in each generation.
The surprise and horror of it all was that no matter where we traced them,
whether in the prosperous rural district, in the city slums to which some
had drifted, or in the more remote mountain regions, or whether it was a
question of the second or the sixth generation, an appalling amount of
defectiveness was everywhere found.
In the course of the work of tracing various members of the family, our
field worker occasionally found herself in the midst of a good family of
the same name, which apparently was in no way related to the girl whose
ancestry we were investigating. In such cases, there was nothing to be
done but to beat a retreat and start again in another direction. However,
these cases became so frequent that there gradually grew the conviction
that ours must be a degenerate offshoot from an older family of better
stock. Definite work was undertaken in order to locate the point at which
the separation took place. Over and over, the investigation was laid aside
in sheer despair of ever being able to find absolute proofs or to
establish missing links in the testimony. Then some freshly discovered
facts, that came often quite unexpectedly, would throw new light on the
situation, and the work would be resumed.
The great-great-grandfather of Deborah was Martin Kallikak.[1] That we
knew. We had also traced the good family, before alluded to, back to an
ancestor belonging to an older generation than this Martin Kallikak, but
bearing the same name. He was the father of a large family. His eldest son
was named Frederick, but there was no son by the name of Martin.
Consequently, no connection could be made. Many months later, a
granddaughter of Martin revealed in a burst of confidence the situation.
She told us (and this was afterwards fully verified) that Martin had a
_half brother_ Frederick,--and that Martin never had an own brother
“because,” as she now naïvely expressed it, “you see, his mother had him
before she was married.” Deeper scrutiny into the life of Martin Kallikak
Sr., which was made possible through well-preserved family records,
enabled us to complete the story.
[1] All names, both Christian and sur-names, are fictitious.
When Martin Sr., of the good family, was a boy of fifteen, his father
died, leaving him without parental care or oversight. Just before
attaining his majority, the young man joined one of the numerous military
companies that were formed to protect the country at the beginning of the
Revolution. At one of the taverns frequented by the militia he met a
feeble-minded girl by whom he became the father of a feeble-minded son.
This child was given, by its mother, the name of the father in full, and
thus has been handed down to posterity the father’s name and the mother’s
mental capacity. This illegitimate boy was Martin Kallikak Jr., the
great-great-grandfather of our Deborah, and from him have come four
hundred and eighty descendants. One hundred and forty-three of these, we
have conclusive proof, were or are feeble-minded, while only forty-six
have been found normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful.
Among these four hundred and eighty descendants, thirty-six have been
illegitimate.
There have been thirty-three sexually immoral persons, mostly prostitutes.
There have been twenty-four confirmed alcoholics.
There have been three epileptics.
Eighty-two died in infancy.
Three were criminal.
Eight kept houses of ill fame.
These people have married into other families, generally of about the same
type, so that we now have on record and charted eleven hundred and
forty-six individuals.
Of this large group, we have discovered that two hundred and sixty-two
were feeble-minded, while one hundred and ninety-seven are considered
normal, the remaining five hundred and eighty-one being still
undetermined. (“Undetermined,” as here employed, often means not that we
knew nothing about the person, but that we could not decide. They are
people we can scarcely recognize as normal; frequently they are not what
we could call good members of society. But it is very difficult to decide
without more facts whether the condition that we find or that we learn
about, as in the case of older generations, is or was really one of true
feeble-mindedness.)
In 1803, Martin Kallikak Jr., otherwise known as the “Old Horror,” married
Rhoda Zabeth, a normal woman. (See Chart II.) They had ten children, of
whom one died in infancy and another died at birth with the mother. Of
those who lived, the oldest was Millard, the direct ancestor of our
Deborah. He married Althea Haight, and they had fifteen children, of whom
more later.
The next born of Martin Jr. was Nathan, known in the community as “Daddy”
(see Chart III),[2] who died at the advanced age of ninety-three. He was
the father of six children. One of his sons was a criminal, a horse thief,
who also stole a flock of sheep which the owner all unwittingly helped him
to drive away. Three other children of “Daddy” married and themselves had
children. These are all families about whose mentality it is difficult to
decide. They are all peculiar, but more respectable than some other
branches of this family. One is dead. The sixth, a daughter, is
feeble-minded and sexually immoral. She married a man who was
feeble-minded and alcoholic. Of her six children, two at least are
feeble-minded. Whether her husband is the father of all of the children is
very doubtful. Sexual immorality and alcoholism are prevalent in this
family. One of the sons married a feeble-minded woman who came from
feeble-minded stock. They had six children, all of whom were
feeble-minded. One of these is of the Mongolian type, an interesting fact,
as it shows that this particular form of arrest of development may occur
in a defective family.
[2] It is important to trace out in detail these relationships on
the charts.
[Illustration: LAST HOME OF MILLARD KALLIKAK.]
[Illustration: ESTHER, DAUGHTER OF “DADDY” KALLIKAK.]
Martin Jr.’s third child was James (Chart II), who went away, and we know
nothing about him.
Martin Jr.’s fourth child, “Old Sal” (Chart IV), was feeble-minded and she
married a feeble-minded man. Two of their children are undetermined, but
one of these had at least one feeble-minded grandchild; the other, an
alcoholic man, had three feeble-minded grandchildren, one of whom is in
the Training School at Vineland. She is thus a cousin of Deborah--a fact
not known until this study was made. The two other children of Old Sal
were feeble-minded, married feeble-minded wives, and had large families of
defective children and grandchildren, as will be seen in the chart.
The fifth child of Martin Jr. was Jemima (Chart V), feeble-minded and
sexually immoral. She lived with a feeble-minded man named Horser, to whom
she was supposed to have been married. Of her five children, three are
known to have been feeble-minded, two are undetermined. From these again,
have come a large number of feeble-minded children and grandchildren.
Jemima had an illegitimate son by a man who was high in the Nation’s
offices. This son married a feeble-minded girl and they had feeble-minded
children, and grandchildren.
The sixth child of Martin Jr., known as “Old Moll” (Chart VI), was
feeble-minded, alcoholic, epileptic, and sexually immoral. She had three
illegitimate children who were sent to the almshouse, and from there bound
out to neighboring farmers. One of these turned out normal, one was
feeble-minded, and the other undetermined. Neither of the two older ones
had any children. The third child, a daughter, was tubercular, but nothing
is known of her descendants, except that there were several children and
grandchildren.
The seventh child of Martin Jr. was a daughter, Sylvia (Chart VII), who
seemed to be a normal woman. She was taken very young by a good family who
brought her up carefully. She later married a normal man. Although we have
marked her normal, she was always peculiar. All her children and
grandchildren were either normal or are undetermined.
The youngest child of Martin Jr. who lived to grow up was Amy Jones, also
normal. (Chart VIII.) She, too, was taken into a good family and married a
normal man, and lived to be very old. Two of Amy’s children died in
infancy. Of two others, one was normal and one feeble-minded. This latter
married a normal man and had one feeble-minded and immoral daughter; five
other children are undetermined.
We now return to Martin Jr.’s oldest son, Millard (Chart IX), to take up
the story of his descendants, of whom our girl Deborah is one.
Millard married Althea Haight about 1830. They had fifteen children born
in the following years: 1830, 1831, 1832, 1834, 1836, 1838, 1840, 1841,
1843, 1845, 1847, 1849, 1851, 1854, 1856. The mother died in 1857. This
mother, Althea Haight, was feeble-minded. That she came from a
feeble-minded family is evidenced by the fact that she had at least one
feeble-minded brother, while of her mother it was said that the “devil
himself could not live with her.” The feeble-minded brother had six
children, of whom three are known to have been feeble-minded. He had seven
grandchildren who were feeble-minded, and no less than nine feeble-minded
great-grandchildren. (These are not shown on the chart.)
The oldest child of Millard and Althea was a daughter who grew up a
feeble-minded and immoral woman. She had several husbands, but only one of
her children lived to be old enough to marry. This one, a daughter of
illegitimate birth, married a man of good family who was a confirmed
alcoholic. Their children are all undetermined, except one who was normal.
The second child of Millard, a daughter, was a bad character. We know of
one illegitimate and feeble-minded son who married a feeble-minded and
immoral girl. They had four children, but all died in infancy. This wife
was also the mother of an illegitimate son, who was feeble-minded and
sexually immoral.
The third child of Millard was Justin (Chart IX, section E), the
grandfather of our Deborah. His family we shall discuss later.
According to Mendelian expectation, all of the children of Millard
Kallikak and Althea Haight should have been feeble-minded, because the
parents were such. The facts, so far as known, confirm this expectation,
with the exception of the fourth child, a daughter, who was taken into a
good family and grew up apparently a normal woman. She married a normal
man and they had one son who was normal. He married a normal woman and
they have two children, a boy and girl, who are normal and above average
intelligence.
The fifth child was Albert, feeble-minded, who died at twenty-five,
unmarried.
The sixth child was Warren, who had four children, three of whom were
feeble-minded and of very doubtful morality. Each of the three had
feeble-minded children. One of these, Guss by name, was specially loose
and much mixed in his marital relations.
[Illustration: RUINS OF MOUNTAIN HUT BUILT BY MARTIN KALLIKAK JR. 1805.]
[Illustration: SITE OF MOUNTAIN HOME OF MILLARD KALLIKAK, WHERE FIFTEEN OF
HIS CHILDREN WERE BORN.]
The seventh child was Lavinia, who died unmarried at the age of
thirty-nine. She had been brought up in a good family and never
manifested any of those characteristics that indicate feeble-mindedness.
The eighth was Cordelia, who died at nine; condition unknown.
The ninth was Prince, who died at four years.
The tenth was Paula, feeble-minded; married and had four children. Her
husband and children are undetermined.
Then comes Gregory, the eleventh, who was feeble-minded and alcoholic. He
married an alcoholic and syphilitic woman, mentality difficult to
determine. They had seven children, of whom two were feeble-minded,
syphilitic, alcoholic, and sexually immoral. One died of delirium tremens,
the other of alcoholism, leaving a long line of descendants. The other
children died young, except one daughter who has a feeble-minded
grandchild who cannot speak.
The twelfth child was Harriet, feeble-minded, twice married, but without
children.
The thirteenth, Sanders, who was drowned as a young man, was feeble-minded
and sexually immoral.
The fourteenth was Thomas, feeble-minded, alcoholic, and sexually immoral.
He died from over self-indulgence. He was married and had a daughter, but
her condition as well as her mother’s is unknown.
The last child was Joseph, feeble-minded. He married his first cousin, Eva
Haight, who was also feeble-minded. They had five children, two dying in
infancy, and the rest feeble-minded. Of their nineteen grandchildren, five
died in infancy, one is undetermined, and the remaining thirteen are all
feeble-minded.
Millard Kallikak married for his second wife a normal woman, a sister of a
man of prominence. She was, however, of marked peculiarity. By her, he had
three children; two died in infancy. The one who grew to manhood was
alcoholic and syphilitic. He ran off with the wife of his nephew, who was
about his own age. His mental condition is undetermined. He was killed by
an accident a few years later.
We now return to the third born of this family, Justin Kallikak, the
grandfather of our Deborah (Chart IX, section E). He was feeble-minded,
alcoholic, and sexually immoral. He married Eunice Barrah, who belonged to
a family of dull mentality. Her mother and paternal grandfather were
feeble-minded, and the grandfather had a brother that was feeble-minded.
That brother had at least six descendants who were feeble-minded. The
father, also, had a brother feeble-minded who had eleven children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who were feeble-minded. (Not
shown).
The children of Deborah’s grandparents, Justin and Eunice, were as
follows: first, Martha, the mother of our Deborah, whose story has already
been partly told. This woman is supposed to have had three illegitimate
children before Deborah was born. They died in infancy. The next younger
half sister of Deborah was placed out by a charitable organization when
very young. From their records we learn that in five years she had been
tried in thirteen different families and by all found impossible. In one
of these she set the barn on fire. When found by our field worker, she had
grown to be a girl of twenty, pretty, graceful, but of low mentality. She
had already followed the instinct implanted in her by her mother, and was
on the point of giving birth to an illegitimate child. She was sent to a
hospital. The child died, and then the girl was placed permanently in a
home for feeble-minded. An own brother of this girl was placed out in a
private family. When a little under sixteen, his foster mother died and
her husband married again. Thus the boy was turned adrift. Having been
well trained, and being naturally of an agreeable disposition, he easily
found employment. Bad company, however, soon led to his discharge. He has
now drifted into one of our big cities. It requires no prophet to predict
his future.
The last family of half brothers and sisters of Deborah are, at present,
living with the mother and her second husband. The oldest three of these
are distinctly feeble-minded. Between them and the two younger children
there was a stillbirth and a miscarriage. The little ones appear normal
and test normal for their ages, but there is good reason to believe that
they will develop the same defect as they grow older.
Besides the mother of Deborah, Justin and Eunice had ten other children,
of whom six died in infancy. One of the daughters, Margaret, was taken by
a good family when a very small child. When she was about thirteen, she
visited her parents for a few weeks. While her mother was away at work,
her father, who was a drunken brute, committed incest with her. When the
fact became known in her adopted home, she was placed in the almshouse.
The child born there soon died, and she was again received into the family
where she formerly lived. The care with which she was surrounded prevented
her from becoming a vicious woman. Although of dull mentality, she was a
good and cheerful worker. When about thirty-five, she married a
respectable workingman but has had no children by him.
Another daughter, Abigail, feeble-minded, married a feeble-minded man by
whom she had two feeble-minded children, besides a third that died in
infancy. She later married a normal man.
The next child of Justin and Eunice was Beede, who is feeble-minded. He
married a girl who left him before their child was born. He lives at
present with a very low, immoral woman.
The youngest child of Justin and Eunice was a son, Gaston, feeble-minded
and a horse thief; he removed to a distant town where he married. He has
one child; mentality of both mother and child undetermined.
This is the ghastly story of the descendants of Martin Kallikak Sr., from
the nameless feeble-minded girl.
Although Martin himself paid no further attention to the girl nor her
child, society has had to pay the heavy price of all the evil he
engendered.
Martin Sr., on leaving the Revolutionary Army, straightened up and married
a respectable girl of good family, and through that union has come another
line of descendants of radically different character. These now number
four hundred and ninety-six in direct descent. All of them are normal
people. Three men only have been found among them who were somewhat
degenerate, but they were not defective. Two of these were alcoholic, and
the other sexually loose.
All of the legitimate children of Martin Sr. married into the best
families in their state, the descendants of colonial governors, signers of
the Declaration of Independence, soldiers and even the founders of a great
university. Indeed, in this family and its collateral branches, we find
nothing but good representative citizenship. There are doctors, lawyers,
judges, educators, traders, landholders, in short, respectable citizens,
men and women prominent in every phase of social life. They have scattered
over the United States and are prominent in their communities wherever
they have gone. Half a dozen towns in New Jersey are named from the
families into which Martin’s descendants have married. There have been no
feeble-minded among them; no illegitimate children; no immoral women; only
one man was sexually loose. There has been no epilepsy, no criminals, no
keepers of houses of prostitution. Only fifteen children have died in
infancy. There has been one “insane,” a case of religious mania, perhaps
inherited, but not from the Kallikak side. The appetite for strong drink
has been present here and there in this family from the beginning. It was
in Martin Sr., and was cultivated at a time when such practices were
common everywhere. But while the other branch of the family has had
twenty-four victims of habitual drunkenness, this side scores only two.
The charts of these two families follow.
THE CHARTS
THE CHARTS
Chart I shows the line of descent of the Kallikak family from their first
colonial ancestor. It was Martin who divided it into a bad branch on one
hand and a good branch on the other. Each of these branches is traced
through the line of the eldest son down to a person of the present
generation. On the bad side it ends with Deborah Kallikak, an inmate of
the Training School at Vineland, on the good side with the son of a
prominent and wealthy citizen of the same family name, now resident of
another State.
Chart II shows the children of Martin Sr. by his wife and by the nameless
feeble-minded girl, and also the children of Martin Jr.
Then follow Charts III to IX and A to K, giving in detail each of these
two branches, the upper series being the normal family, the descendants of
Martin Kallikak Sr. through his wife: the lower is the bad family, his
descendants through the nameless feeble-minded girl who was not his wife.
EXPLANATION OF SYMBOLS
Individuals are represented by squares and circles, the squares being
males, the circles, females. Black squares and circles (with a white “F”)
mean feeble-minded individuals; N means normal persons.
The clear squares or circles indicate that the mentality of the person is
undetermined.
“d. inf.” means died in infancy.
A horizontal or slightly oblique line connects persons who are mated.
Unless otherwise indicated, they are supposed to have been legally
married.
The symbols dependent from the same horizontal line are for brothers and
sisters.
A vertical line connecting this horizontal line with an individual or with
a line connecting two individuals, indicates the parent or parents of the
fraternity.
Letters placed around the symbol for an individual are as follows:
A--Alcoholic, meaning decidedly intemperate, a drunkard; B--Blind;
C--Criminalistic; D--Deaf; E--Epileptic; I--Insane; Sy--Syphilitic;
Sx--Sexually immoral; T--Tuberculous.
A short vertical line dependent from the horizontal fraternity line
indicates a child whose sex is unknown. An F at the end of the line
indicates that such child was feeble-minded.
N? or F? indicates that the individual has not been definitely determined,
but, considering all the data, it is concluded that on the whole, the
person was probably normal or feeble-minded, as the letter signifies.
A small d. followed by a numeral means died at that age; b. means born,
usually followed by the date.
A single figure below a symbol indicates that the symbol stands for more
than one individual--the number denoted by the figure, _e.g._ a circle
with a “4” below it, indicates that there were four girls in that
fraternity, represented by that one symbol.
The Hand indicates the child that is in the Institution at Vineland, whose
family history is the subject of the chart.
A black horizontal line under a symbol indicates that that individual was
in some public institution at state expense.
The fact that the parents were not married is indicated either by the
expression “unmarried” or by the word “illegitimate,” placed near the
symbol for the child.
[Illustration: CHART I.]
[Illustration: CHART II.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]
[Illustration: CHART A.
CHART B.]
[Illustration: CHART III.]
[Illustration: CHART C.]
[Illustration: CHART IV. Section A.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]
[Illustration: CHART D.]
[Illustration: CHART IV. Section B.]
[Illustration: CHART E.]
[Illustration: CHART V. Section A.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]
[Illustration: CHART F.]
[Illustration: CHART V. Section B.
CHART VI.]
[Illustration: CHART G.]
[Illustration: CHART VII.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]
[Illustration: CHART H.]
[Illustration: CHART VIII.]
[Illustration: CHART I.]
[Illustration: CHART IX. Section A.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]
[Illustration: CHART J.]
[Illustration: CHART IX. Section B.]
[Illustration: CHART K.]
[Illustration: CHART IX. Section C.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]
[Illustration: CHART IX. Section D.]
[Illustration: CHART IX. Section E.
N = Normal. F = Feeble-minded. Sx = Sexually immoral. A = Alcoholic. I =
Insane. Sy = Syphilitic. C = Criminalistic. D = Deaf. d. inf. = died in
infancy. T = Tuberculous. Hand points to child in Vineland Institution.
For further explanation see pp. 33-35.]