AN OFFICE-HOLDING FAMILY 



Descendants of One Massachusetts Man Have Held an Unusual Number of 



Offices of Public Service and Trust Through Six Generations — Eugenic 



Significance of Such a Pedigree — Genealogists Should Pay 



More Attention to Civic Worth in Their Histories 



Merton T. Goodrich, Jay, Me. 



IN a monarchic countr3^ office-holding 

 tends to be a prerogative of families 

 which have wealth and social posi- 

 tion. It has not necessarily a very 

 high correlation with eugenic worth. 

 But conditions in a democracy are 

 different. Here, the candidate for office 

 is judged very largely on his own merits. 

 When a local, non-partisan office is to 

 be filled, the voters almost invariably 

 consider the qualifications of the candi- 

 date and care very little about the record 

 of his father. Even in partisan politics 

 but little is said concerning family 

 history. While it cannot be said that 

 the best qualified man is always the 

 one elected, while it may be admitted 

 that factors outside of personal worth 

 sometimes influence the result of an 

 election; it is true that in a democracy 

 the people will not allow a man to 

 remain in an elective office for long 

 unless he is superior in some way to his 

 competitors. Therefore, if a family in 

 the United States should possess for 

 several generations many members who 

 had held local, non-partisan offices and 

 served for a long time in these positions, 

 it would seem to be something worthy 

 of study from a eugenic point of view, it 

 might indicate the inheritance of cer- 

 tain traits which the people expect such 

 officers to possess. 



While compiling the genealogy of a 

 certain New England family, I found a 

 large munber of members who had 

 held public office. I shall present the 

 facts in this paper, and point out some 

 of the ways in which I think they have 

 eugenic bearing. 



The family is of Anglo-Saxon origin, 

 the several lines of ancestry having 

 been traced back to English immigrants 

 who settled in Massachusetts between 



1630 and 1640. So far as can be learned 

 these ancestors were no different from 

 the majority of Puritans. None of 

 them held public office. 



THE FIRST GENERATION 



Our study begins with a man whose 

 paternal grandfather came from Suffolk 

 County, England, in 1634. His wife's 

 father and grandfather came together 

 from Southampton in 1635. He moved 

 with his family from the town in which 

 he was born to a town in the central 

 part of Massachusetts. He was one of 

 the first settlers of this town and was 

 active in bringing about its incorpora- 

 tion. He was elected to several town 

 offices but lived only nine years after he 

 moved there. There were twelve chil- 

 dren in the family, all of whom lived 

 to grow up. Of the seven boys, five 

 held town offices, one of them being 

 town clerk twenty years and chairman 

 of the board of selectmen thirty-eight 

 years, but of the public life of the other 

 two nothing is known. Public officers 

 are also to be found among the children 

 and descendants of the five girls who 

 married men of more or less local 

 prominence. In fact, throughout the 

 genealogy, the presence of office-holders 

 among the female branches seems to be 

 nearly, if not quite, as common as 

 among the male branches. This may 

 be accounted for to some extent by 

 assortative mating such as that just 

 noted. 



Office-holding certainly cannot be 

 spoken of as an inherited trait. The 

 facts available do not even disprove 

 that it is wholly a matter of education 

 and environment, to one who leans 

 toward that explanation. But the fact 

 that a large proportion of the members 



277 



