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Indiana University Studies 
life. Her last years were spent in misery and poverty. She 
finally died of tuberculosis and asthma in 1917. By John 
she had 2 children, Martha and Homer. She then separated 
from John and married a Calton and James Hall respectively. 
She was of inferior mentality but could not be called feeble- 
minded. She herself told that she ‘‘inherited a taste for 
drink, got in with a fast crowd, and married a drunkard, 
John Gardner”. She always lived in poverty as none of her 
husbands ever had enough ahead to pay for the rent of a 
decent house. After her death, James Buchannon, the hus- 
band, married Mrs. Emmett Keen, who is charted with the 
Keens of Township 9 and has been making her a good living. 
He has 2 children by his former marriage who were placed 
in a home and placed out from there. 
The case of Martha, the first child of John Gardner and 
Mary Ann McCormack, shows that in most cases it would be 
more economical to segregate or colonize the feeble-minded 
woman than it is to allow her to run at large. When a girl, 
barely in her teens, Martha married Henry Kitson, who never 
lived with her. In about 6 weeks, her son Elmer was born. 
In a few succeeding years 4 children said by her mother to 
belong to Jim Fisher, the father of Ethel AbbotEs last child, 
were born in rapid succession. Two others whose fathers 
are said to have been Sam Slack and John Tipton, respectively, 
were next born to Martha. By this time she was about 26 
years old and Grant Calvin, a feeble-minded man, became 
enamoured of Martha’s charms and without difficulty obtained 
license to marry her. They now have 2 small children who 
can scarcely grow up to be other than burdens on society. 
Two of the children have died, and 4 were taken by the Board 
of Children’s Guardians and sent to an Orphans’ Home. 
Homer, the second child of John Gardner and Mary Ann, 
is another edition of John. He is lazy, alcoholic, and immoral. 
He feels no compunction when he sees his wife bending over 
the washboard and cares still less when he sees the empty 
larder. He often goes off on sprees which last several weeks. 
He has served a long sentence at the Penal Farm. His wife 
is Mabel Barr, a member of the Moore family of Township 12. 
They have 3 babies living and 1 dead. 
After the death of Patrick McCormack, Cynthia Lyons, 
his widow, married Kenneth Briscoe, by whom she had 2 chil- 
dren, William and John. William remained in Kentucky so 
