family stories

 A detail of a crudely retouched image of "Kallikak" children which (intentionally?) made them appear grotesque. From the book The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness.

Did anyone else find the article in the New Yorker, Strangers on the Mountain, about the "Jackson Whites" of New Jersey, as riveting as I did? I'm not sure why I have an utter fascination with genealogy, ethnic tracing, endogamy, and consanguinity*. The piece was a rather unexpected investigation of the self-proclaimed Ramapough Mountain Indians of Stag Hill, New Jersey, a group of "racially indeterminate clansfolk" whose isolation, rustic customs, and general "hillbilly" designation have kept them in local legend for generations. While the article tried to tread carefully,  distinguishing between fact and folklore and long-held prejudice, it still conveyed unmistakable  throwaway descriptions of local color: the Stag Hill area dotted with spare tires and rusting appliances.

Thinking is that these "mountain people" are descendants of Lenape Indians, Hessian deserters, Tory sympathizers (from the Revolution), and runaway Dutch-owned slaves, though most of this is unproven. What is known is that many families have Dutch surnames, are "negroid" or reddish-complected, and some have blue eyes. Their reputation for close intermarriage, poverty, and penchant for squirrel meat put me in mind of the Jukes and the Kallikaks, an earlier obsession of mine. (See my earlier post on Hapsburg Jaw, and the not-at-all-sinister Cold Spring Eugenics Archive, among other topics)

The "Jukes" were a New York hill family studied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Richard L. Dugdale. He found that of 29 male blood relatives, 17 had been arrested and 15 convicted of crimes. His book, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, claimed "Max," a descendant of early Dutch settlers and who was born between 1720 and 1740, had been the ancestor of more than 76 convicted criminals, 18 brothel-keepers, 120 prostitutes, over 200 relief recipients and 2 cases of "feeble-mindedness." A follow-up study was published in 1916 by Arthur Estabrook of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York (see online archive, mentioned above).

The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, a 1912 book by psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard, was another in a stream of "scientific" social treatises published in the first few decades of the century when the eugenics movement was at its peak. The pseudonymous Jukes, Kallikaks, and Nams studies assumed iconic status and contributed to sterilization laws adopted by 30 states in the early part of the 20th century. Laws allowing the involuntary sterilization of sex offenders, habitual criminals, epileptics, and the "feebleminded" were meant to keep "defectives" from reproducing and, thus, reduce the number of those burdening the state. Additionally, there was the intent to prevent mildly retarded people from reproducing. Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the Supreme Court's 1927 opinion upholding the legality of eugenic sterilization, which included the infamous phrase "Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

In a shocking (on many levels) reprise of that famous case, this past fall a 35-year-old Tessa Savicki sued a Boston-area hospital for performing a tubal ligation, thus sterilizing her, after the birth of her 9th child. Two of her children are on welfare and she is unemployed...
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I once sent away to get my DNA tested. I was crushed to discover that, as a female, I could only get mitochondrial DNA traced: my mother's side. Half the story is missing! The portion of me that was readable was deemed to be 89% European and 11% East Asian. Ironically, it was my father who was once mistaken for an Asian, or so the story went, much to the hilarity of all involved.
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*update: I just realized why I periodically return to this subject with passionate interest— it is because genetic tracing, genealogy, et al. are all threads connecting the present to the past in some tangible way. It is like discovering echoes that never quite fade.

The New York Evening Journal, 1923

"consanguineity": notes

I realize I have no tag or label for this post. Light research based on passing thoughts? Odd "thought clusters"? It was a passage from an article in last week's New Yorker about language and a remote Amazonian tribe that got me thinking about today's note cluster:

"'Besides,' Gordon said, 'if there was some kind of Appalachian inbreeding or retardation going on, you'd see it in the hairlines, facial features, motor ability.'

Aside from the stunningly un-PC articulation of "Appalachian inbreeding" what struck me was the noting of hairlines. Hairlines? I tried doing a little googling about inbreeding and physical characteristics but didn't come up with much about hairlines. Jawlines, though, is another matter. The Hapsburg jaw, as classically manifested in Phillip IV of Spain, at top, is "mandibular prognathism" or severe lantern jaw and underbite. The Hapsburg dynasty was rife with this and other unfortunate conditions, with Phillip's son Charles II apparently reaching the apotheosis of inbreeding. The effluent of generations of close intra-family marriage (his father and mother were uncle and niece), Charles was impotent, mentally deficient, and unable to chew properly.
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The famous Goya portrait of the Spanish royal family of 1800 is an excruciatingly unidealized representation of mental sluggishness, close marriage, political commentary and the just plain fugly.
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I then revisited old cyber-research haunts at the fascinating and not-as-creepy-as-it-sounds Eugenics Archive (where the next image down is from). The Archive has a terrific educational site that's admirably thorough, beautifully cross-referenced and simply well-done (a quick guide to themes here). A description of the Archive from their site:

Eugenics was, quite literally, an effort to breed better human beings – by encouraging the reproduction of people with "good" genes and discouraging those with "bad" genes. Eugenicists effectively lobbied for social legislation to keep racial and ethnic groups separate, to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and to sterilize people considered "genetically unfit." Elements of the American eugenics movement were models for the Nazis, whose radical adaptation of eugenics culminated in the Holocaust.We now invite you to experience the unfiltered story of American eugenics – primarily through materials from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940.... It is important to remind yourself that the vast majority of eugenics work has been completely discredited. In the final analysis, the eugenic description of human life reflected political and social prejudices, rather than scientific facts.

I'd found the Archive when doing a search about a book I'd read of: "The Jukes; a Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity," by Richard Dugdale. First published in 1877, it was a study of the lineage of a certain (NY State) family perceived to be mired exclusively in prostitution, thievery and indigence, through several generations. The story continues:

A.H. Estabrook, of the Eugenics Record Office, resurveyed the Jukes (1915) and the Ishmaelites [another pseudonymous family] (1923), and found continued evidence of hereditary feebleminedness and other dysgenic traits. The Jukes and Ishmaelites joined the Kallikaks and Nams as examples of eugenical family studies that were widely taught to social workers and college students during the 1920s and 1930s.

The Archive has riveting field photos, case notes and truly mind-boggling commentary. It also documents Estabrook's other book, "Mongrel Virginians." Enough said.
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Lastly, I was moved to rediscover the work of Shelby Lee Adams whose photograph of the Napier family, "The Hog Killing" (1990), is shown above. He was born into Appalachia-- Hazard, Kentucky-- and gradually, over 30 years, became known for documenting it on film. I have a book of Adams' work and find it fascinating, but difficult, viewing.
He states:

I have not shied away from what and who has been presented to me. Only an insider could share in this world and I've worked with that knowledge all along. Indeed understanding my place within this culture has been part of my motivation. ...In my opinion this mountain culture should be applauded. Many examples of my work illustrate tolerance of others, resiliency, and acceptance with dignity of conditions others would abhor.