OF A CERTAIN PENNSYLVANIA FAMILY, 37 



The children of this couple are: IV-93, born 1856, died about 1905 

 of syphilis. She was a slow, stupid, incapable, licentious girl, lacking 

 sense of number and quantity. Had a most rudimentary skill in 

 housekeeping. Her first child was supposedly illegitimate. She 

 married IV-94, who had strayed into the community. He was thought 

 to be a decent man, but weak, ambitionless, and of a large imagination 

 and a great conceit. He worked round by the day, but was often idle 

 when work was plentiful. It is thought that his wife helped out the 

 family income by immoral means. She was ill for a long time, her 

 body was covered with sores, and was so foul with syphilis that after 

 her death it was impossible to prepare it properly for burial. IV-94 

 is now a thin, stooping man with quavering voice, trembling hands, 

 and uncertain gait. Can read and write and discuss with some 

 intelligence general questions of the day. His favorite theme is his 

 heroism in the Civil War, in which he says he was enlisted at 13, and 

 saw service from Gettysburg to Petersburg, engaging manfully in 36 

 battles. He was seriously wounded in the right arm at Petersburg. 

 Few credit these stories, and he has never been able to establish his 

 claim to a pension. During his early life he is said to have led an ad- 

 venturous existence with his uncle, the commander of a revenue-cutter, 

 having had to leave home because of the abuse of his father. The 

 latter was not alcoholic, "but just plain ugly." He had no brothers 

 and all his sisters died in infancy. 



The first child (V-190) of IV— 93 and IV— 94 was born about 1880, 

 died 1909. She was thought by some to be illegitimate. Was taken 

 as a child into a good family, and grew to be a fine, capable, intelli- 

 gent woman. Married V-189, and at the time of the birth of her 

 first child was taken with "paralysis of the heart," which eventually 

 caused her death. 



The second child (V-192), born 1882, spent much of her girlhood at the 

 home of the grandson of Isaac Rufer, whose benevolence has been noted 

 earlier. She was never able to progress at school. She had a daughter, 

 and afterwards married the man who was, presumably, the father of 

 her child. He and the child, which was kept by the Rufers, both died 

 and V-192 afterwards married V-193. He is shiftless, good-for-noth- 

 ing, densely ignorant. His mother is a very illiterate, slipshod, and 

 immoral woman who ran away from her husband and lived with 

 another man. His father had a rudimentary education, was a black- 

 smith and stone-mason. He died several years ago from the effects 

 of a paralytic stroke. His feeble-minded brother has recently married 

 a middle-grade imbecile suffering from secondary syphilis, who was for 

 a short time at the Institution for the Care of the Feeble-Minded of 

 Western Pennsylvania. She belongs to a very bad family, and was 

 run out of town because of her immoral relations with a negro and a 

 Chinaman. It was at this juncture that her husband "rescued her" 



