The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-MindednessGoddard, Henry Herbert
Science
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness
Goddard, Henry Herbert
Heredity, Human; Mental retardation; People with mental disabilities
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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