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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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