54 HEREDITY AND SOCIAL FITNESS 



We will now take up the marriages of the sisters and the two remain- 

 ing brothers: 



III-l, born about 1833. Mentally deficient and stuttered, but 

 fairly steady and capable in his work, trying hard to make an honest 

 living and maintain his independence. His wife is good-for-nothing, 

 said to be the only representative of her family in this part of the coun- 

 try. She ran away with her son-in-law, leaving to the father the care 

 of their six children, the youngest an infant. The family scattered and 

 lived part of the time in the county home; III-l, too, was there. At 

 various times he would slip away to stay with his sister or one of his 

 daughters, or persuade one of them to keep house for him. He was 

 finally, in 1906, taken to the home of his son-in-law and remained 

 there until his death in 1911. His children were: 



IV-2, born 1860. Few particulars obtainable. Left home very 

 young, married and lived away from the rest of her family, for the most 

 part in C. Now reported dead and nothing is known of her children. 



The second (IV-4), bom 1862, was the daughter whose husband 

 eloped with her mother. His family have a bad history of sex immor- 

 ality and shiftlessness. She (IV-4) had a daughter (V-2) by him, and 

 later a second illegitimate daughter (V-3) whom she " swore on " IV-24, 

 Line A, Chart A. Spent some time with both children at the county 

 home. Later the children were put out from here, the young one going 

 to her father, the elder adopted by a good family in a distant part of 

 the State. IV-4 is now married to IV-94, Chart A, whose first wife 

 was IV-93, Line D. She is a short, round-shouldered woman with 

 rolling gait, squinting eyes, and twitching features; talks in a high 

 nasal drawl a steady stream of irrelevant matter, principally of her 

 housekeeping, which is fair, of her scholarship, and old-time leadership 

 in the district school. She relates with gusto how she once broke up 

 the school because the teacher was too stuck-up to wear a calico dress 

 as she had to do, and so lazy she would not "learn 'm nawthin." When 

 she left the pupils followed, declaring, ''if E. can't learn nawthin, 

 nobody can't." Still, she was never able to knit or write, since she 

 always "put wrong stitches and letters in faster than anyone could 

 take them out." Her children are : 



V-2, born 1878. As a child lived with her grandfather and at the 

 county home. At 8 was taken from the latter place by a family of 

 some means and refinement. Went to school until she was 16 but 

 never progressed beyond the fourth grade. Was very bad-tempered, 

 and in spite of excellent training refused to learn anything of house- 

 keeping. At 14 ran away from her foster parents; was returned, but 

 continued incorrigible, and a few years later married surreptitiously 

 V-1, who is a section hand, sober, steady, plodding, with very little 

 education ; belonging to a family showing fair mentality and industry. 

 Nothing worse can be imagined than the three-room shack in which 

 this couple are bringing up their ten children. Of these, the eldest 



