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
serve in that capacity myself.” Needless to say, his services were
thankfully accepted, with the result that nearly two hundred persons were
added to Deborah’s family chart.
This proved, however, only the beginning of the study that has been made
of the family in the vicinity of B----. Numerous visits to many homes,
always from the center of the genial couple’s house, have made the field
worker such a well-known figure among these people, that they long ago
forgot what little surprise they may have felt at her first visit. “You’re
one of the family?” was frequently asked her at the beginning. “No, not
really, only as I know so many of your cousins and aunts and uncles, I
thought, since I was in B----, I would like to know you.” This usually
sufficed, but if it did not, the field worker was able so to inundate the
questioner with information about his own relatives, that before she was
through, he had forgotten that anything remained unanswered. The relation
once established, no further explanation was necessary. She was able to go
in and out among them, study their mentality, awake their reminiscences,
until finally the whole story was told.
Besides members of the family, numerous old people were here and there
discovered who were able to add materially to the information otherwise
obtained. One shrewd old farmer who was found tottering in from the field
proved to be of especial service in determining the mental status of
Martin Kallikak Jr. In introducing herself, the field worker had spoken of
her interest in Revolutionary times and of having come to him because she
had been told that he was well informed as to the history of the locality.
“Yes,” he said, with excusable pride, as he led the way to the kitchen
steps descending into the garden, “not much has happened in this place for
the last seventy years in which I have not taken an active part. Do you
see that tree there?” and he pointed to a fine maple that threw its
luxuriant shade over the path that led to the barn. “The day my wife and I
came here sixty years ago, we planted that tree. It was a little sapling
then, and see what it has become!” After much more talk she cautiously put
the question, “Do you remember an old man, Martin Kallikak, who lived on
the mountain edge yonder?” “Do I?” he answered. “Well, I guess! Nobody’d
forget him. Simple,” he went on; “not quite right here,” tapping his head,
“but inoffensive and kind. All the family was that. Old Moll, simple as
she was, would do anything for a neighbor. She finally died--burned to
death in the chimney corner. She had come in drunk and sat down there.
Whether she fell over in a fit or her clothes caught fire, nobody knows.
She was burned to a crisp when they found her. That was the worst of
them, they would drink. Poverty was their best friend in this respect, or
they would have been drunk all the time. Old Martin could never stop as
long as he had a drop. Many’s the time he’s rolled off of Billy Parson’s
porch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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