The term genealogy is derived from the Greek words for “generation” and “knowledge” and is used to describe the study of the development of familial lineages. Genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills has described the practice of genealogy as “history in microcosm,” meaning that the process and methodology often applied to broader historical studies and subjects is instead used to study the history or lineage of one person or family. Genealogists, both trained and amateur, trace the history of families through individuals and their relationships to one another. In the context of the history of eugenics, genealogy was used as a means to identify both desirable (eugenic) and undesirable (dysgenic) traits.

Eugenic Genealogy
Eugenic genealogy sought to examine family trees both to identify individualistic risk factors as well as to demonstrate the effects of “bad breeding” or to locate individuals who may be predisposed to dysgenic or negative eugenic traits. In Canada, as well as in other regions that embraced eugenic ideology, a dominant concern amongst eugenicists was that “feeble-mindedness” or “mental deficiency,” as well as sometimes mental illness, were heritable.

In Alberta, where a eugenic Sexual Sterilization Act was passed in 1928, a sterilization program was developed that targeted individuals who were perceived as being “in danger of transmitting mental deficiency to their children” emphasising the importance of heredity in the application of eugenics (Park and Radford, 1998, 318). In regions that did not implement involuntary sexual sterilization, eugenic genealogy was often still used to assess the risk of dysgenic traits being transmitted to future offspring with varied outcomes including attempts to persuade couples to voluntarily choose not to reproduce as well as forced institutionalisation, which served to sexually segregate individuals (especially women) until they reached the end of their child-bearing years.

Eugenic reformers of the early twentieth century relied heavily on the use of genealogy to support arguments for the implementation of eugenic policy. Francis Galton, who is generally recognized as the father of eugenics, based some of his earliest research on the study of genealogy, assessing individuals as possessing good or bad traits on the basis of their appearance and family history. Galton’s work in Britain influenced American eugenicists, such as Charles Davenport and Henry Goddard, who then undertook studies of inherited traits in an effort to encourage the implementation of eugenic policy. Although these studies often embraced the use of early Mendelian genetics, the practice of genealogy in relation to eugenic theory and policy ultimately hinged on the assignment of social and cultural values to specific biological and social traits of individuals and families.

Pedigree and Degeneracy
In North America, early scientific eugenic studies used the language of genealogy as pedigrees of both exceptional and degenerate families were produced. While many individuals might have their own family tree traced to demonstrate their eugenic worth many of the published studies purported to trace the lineage of families described as degenerate. These family studies relied on the identification of a delinquent or deficient member of society whose family tree was then traced and made available for public consumption with the objective of demonstrating the social cost of bad breeding. The most well-known American examples of these studies including the Kallikak family (studied by H.H. Goddard) and the Juke family (studied by Richard Dugdale). However, similar studies were conducted and often published throughout Canada as well.

For example, in 1927, a report was published in The Bulletin of the Canadian Committee for Mental Hygiene that provided the details of a eugenic family study conducted in the province of Nova Scotia on a family with the name of Smith. The Smith family originated, according to the unidentified author, in 1783 with the union of a man named Smith and a feeble-minded girl. The study recounted that

From that union 570 descendants [had] been traced. Members of this family [then] living in one section of Nova Scotia include[d] 25 feebleminded, 41 cases of illegitimacy, nine who [had] received penitentiary sentences, seven who [had] been sent to jail and three to reform schools; and 10 families who [had] received public relief over considerable periods of time, some of whom [were] living in wretched hovels.(Nova Scotia Takes the Lead, 1927, np)

In conducting genealogical studies of families like the Smiths, so-called normal members of society could be reassured that it was heredity, not social disparity or injustice that was responsible for the vast majority of social ills, including crime, unplanned and extramarital pregnancies, prostitution, and all forms of vice.

Conclusion
The impact of these genealogy studies is evident in their wide reaching appeal and ready assimilation into popular culture. The importance of knowing your family tree and reproducing with eugenics in mind so as not to create a lineage of deficiency appeared in many popular works including Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The long lasting appeal of these genealogies to the scientific and medical community can be demonstrated by the continued discovery of families with pedigrees of deficiency throughout North America and well into the twentieth century.

-Leslie Baker

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