500 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



eldest son of this original pair migTated to the state of 

 Iowa and there married. His wife had been knoAvii to 

 him only a short time, and it is probable that he did not 

 know of the mental status of her forebears. At any rate 

 this marriage initiated a series of tragedies scarcely 

 surpassed in any Eugenics study Avith which I am famil- 

 iar. The w^omaii he married was attractive, intelligent, 

 and a natural favorite. She lived to the age of sixty-six, 

 a highly respected woman, a devoted mother, and died 

 without showing any symptoms of the bad blood flowing 

 in her veins. 



All we know of this woman's family is that her father 

 died in a hospital for the insane, she had one brother who 

 committed a murder and then committed suicide rather 

 than suffer arrest, another brother was guilty of sexual 

 disorders, served a term in the penitentiary for rape, and 

 finally committed suicide. Her mother died when the 

 girl was thirteen years of age, and three children died in 

 infancy, one supposedly in an epileptic fit. This record 

 is sufficient to identify certain mental and moral traits 

 which should not be transmitted. 



The children of the original pair have all shown signs 

 of the unsocial and diseased traits which were inherent 

 in the family of the mother. The eldest daughter, a real 

 Shakespearian shrew, while sh-e was never actually in- 

 sane, was always regarded as very peculiar. She talked 

 almost continually during the waking period of her en- 

 tire life. She was irritable, and unreasonable, an habit- 

 ual scold, showed fits of passion at her children little 

 short of real madness, was unclean in her person and 

 house. Although she raised a large family of children, 

 she never showed the slightest intelligence in the teaching 

 of them, or the organization and administration of her 

 home. She abused her husband and threatened to leave 

 him many times. She talked about her own children in 

 terms quite befitting them, for she apparently realized 

 that her offspring were a degenerate lot. She gave birth 

 to ten children, not one of whom ever gave her, or any- 

 one else, any pleasure. Three girls were always called 

 *' half-witted" by relatives and friends. Two boys 

 served jail sentences for serious sex crimes. Two others 



