<\/p>\n
In his chapter concerning Mendelian eugenics, Carl wrote about Henry Goddard of the Vineland Training School in south Jersey, and his study of one particular family that proved to him that feeble-mindedness and \u201a\u00c4\u00famoral degeneracy\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 were inherited. A member of that family was institutionalized at the school, which was established to care for \u201a\u00c4\u00famentally-defective\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 children.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That family member was Emma Wolverton, a charming and very likable child who happened to score poorly on intelligence tests. She was 17 when Goddard met her, and even though she had been living at the school since she was a child, she had not shown improvement.<\/p>\n Goddard was intrigued, and assembled a team of researchers to look into the background of the school\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s residents to determine what intelligence, or lack thereof, could be found in their families. One of the researchers, Elizabeth Kite, tracked down Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s family. Her mother was Malinda Wolverton, who made a living by \u201a\u00c4\u00faworking as a farmhand and selling soap,\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 in addition to having many children to take care of.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Goddard summarized his and Kite\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s findings in a book he wrote about the family and published in 1912, titled The Kallikak Family<\/em>. That was the pseudonym he used for the Wolvertons. Emma was called Deborah Kallikak, her mother was Martha Kallikak, her father was Justin Kallikak, and her great great grandfather, supposedly the one who generated the degenerate family, was called Martin Kallikak. Goddard invented the name Kallikak by combining two Greek words meaning beautiful and bad.<\/p>\n The name Wolverton is well-known in southwestern Hunterdon County because of the Woolverton Inn, a very popular place to stay in the hamlet of Prallsville in the village of Stockton. The Wolvertons who once owned that property were only distantly related to Emma Wolverton, but it was indeed the same family. (One of these days, I must write about the family associated with the Woolverton Inn, but not today.)<\/p>\n The Kallikak book relied on Kite\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s research. She had identified 480 Wolvertons, all descended from an original John Wolverton. She claimed that 143 of his descendants showed signs of feeble-mindedness, but did not bother to mention that the remaining 237 had no such disadvantage. In fact, some were very successful in life.<\/p>\n The Kallikak Family<\/em> turned into a bestseller. Goddard thought that the logical conclusion to his findings was that feeble-minded people should be rounded up and sterilized to prevent them from passing on their nasty genes to future generations. This theory fell on fertile soil in the early 20th<\/sup> century when many Americans had become hostile to the unfamiliar people who were immigrating from the poorer countries of Europe. Goddard\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s idea was actually adopted in several states that passed sterilization laws. It was not until after World War II that people came to reject the false science of eugenics. By that time, Goddard was no longer running the Training School, which had set aside his approach and become a well-regarded institution for the mentally disabled. Pearl S. Buck was one of its strongest supporters.<\/p>\n So what was it about Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s family that made Goddard think his ideas were correct? And how did Emma connect with the Wolverton family of Hunterdon County?<\/p>\n The Wolverton family of New Jersey began with Charles Wolverton and Mary Chadwick, who first settled in Burlington County in the late 1690s and came to Amwell Township as early as 1714, one of the very first families to settle in present day Hunterdon County. The line of descent to Emma Wolverton goes through Joel Wolverton & Elizabeth Robins, Gabriel Wolverton and Catharine McMurphy, John Wolverton & Elizabeth Roads, William W. Wolverton (c.1801-1893) and Anna Hoagland (1813-1858), John Wolverton (1834-1906) and Emma Burroughs (1840-1883), and finally Malinda Wolverton, Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s mother.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n As mentioned before, it was Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s great great grandfather John Wolverton (aka Martin Kallikak) who was supposedly the source of Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s regrettable inheritance. Elizabeth Kite had heard a story from a member of the family about how John\u00ac\u2020Wolverton had enlisted in a local Revolutionary militia at the age of 15, and while traveling through Pennsylvania fathered a child with a tavern worker who gave birth to a feeble-minded son. She named him after his father, and he grew up to be known as \u201a\u00c4\u00faOld Horror.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 Goddard\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s book says nothing about the tavernworker, even though Kite had identified her. Odd that half of the inheritance would be omitted in Goddard\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s study.<\/p>\n As Carl relates in his book, Goddard\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s theory about the Wolverton family turned out to be bogus, and all because Kite had misunderstood the story that was told to her, of John Wolverton\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s \u201a\u00c4\u00fabastard son.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 It took some modern genealogists to figure out that there were two different John Wolvertons, who happened to be second cousins. And in fact, the branch of the family that supposedly produced more \u201a\u00c4\u00f2horrors,\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 actually did nothing of the kind.<\/p>\n The real Wolverton who served in the Revolution belonged to a completely different branch of the family. He was the son of Morris Wolverton and Margery Baker, and was born September 5, 1755. The John Wolverton from whom Emma descended was the son of Gabriel Wolverton (Morris Wolverton\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s first cousin), and was born about 1776. So the two John Wolvertons were second cousins.<\/p>\n The veteran John married into the Quinby family. John\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s wife Rachel was the daughter of Isaiah Quinby and Rachel Warford of Amwell. (Just a note: John\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s great grandson was Rev. Wm. H. Woolverton, clearly one of the respectable members of the family, who owned the beautiful house that is now known as the Woolverton Inn.) John was recruited at Ringoes Tavern to serve in Capt. George Ely\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s militia. He served 15 monthly tours until he was accidentally shot in the arm by one of the other recruits.3<\/a><\/sup> Since John, the son of Gabriel and ancestor of Emma, was born around 1776, I suppose Kite assumed that he was the son of John the veteran.<\/p>\n One of the most frustrating things about reading through the various articles critiquing the Kallikak book is the way the two John Wolvertons are conflated.<\/p>\n According to the Kallikak book, the family that descended from John Wolverton and the tavernworker was large, equivalent to the family descended from Wolverton\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s proper wife (Rachel Quinby for John, son of Morris; or Emma Roads for John, son of Gabriel). The tavernworker\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s descendants were thought to all be degenerates, while the proper wife\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s descendants were all morally and intellectually superior, according to Kite and Goddard.<\/p>\n To say that Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s parents, grandparents and great grandparents were morally degenerate would be completely inappropriate. The Kallikak book uses remarkably derogatory language for people that Goddard knew so little about. For instance, he described Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s grandfather John Wolverton as \u201a\u00c4\u00fafeeble-minded, alcoholic and sexually immoral,\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 and his wife Emma Burroughs as also feeble-minded. Also, John\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s siblings were said to all be \u201a\u00c4\u00fafeebleminded, immoral, syphilitic, alcoholic and mute.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p>\n But it is true that Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s grandparents had difficult lives. According to Goddard\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s book, Emma Wolverton\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s maternal grandfather, i.e., John Wolverton, gave up farming to work as a laborer in Trenton. In fact, he probably never worked as a farmer. His father, William W. Wolverton, was a cooper by trade, not a farmer. Census records show that John lived with his family in Hillsborough Township up until the time of his marriage in 1862. In June 1863, John Woolverton, a laborer, age 26 and married, was registered with the Union Army from Somerset County. Whether he actually fought in the War, I cannot say. Afterwards, he and his wife moved to Hopewell Township.4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n John Wolverton\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s wife was Emma Burroughs, daughter of George W. & Hannah Burroughs of Hopewell Township. In the 1870 census, John was described as a laborer living in Hopewell Twp. with wife Emma and four children: Ann 8, George 6, Mary 3 and Marinda, age 2. That \u201a\u00c4\u00f2Marinda\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 was Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s mother Malinda, who was born in April 1868.<\/p>\n But in the 1880 census, despite the statement by the authors of The Wolverton Genealogy,5<\/a><\/sup> that Emma Burroughs Wolverton had eleven children, there were none in the household. This is consistent with the claim that John Wolverton was extremely abusive, and that the children had to be removed from the home. It also explains why Malinda was living elsewhere when she was 12 years old.<\/p>\n The census for 1880 tells us that Malinda Wolverton, age 12, was living in the household of William Ivins of Hopewell, a 30-year-old farmer. She was probably hired as a servant to assist Ivins\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s wife Adele, age 28, and her one-year-old son George.<\/p>\n Not long afterwards, Malinda Wolverton left that family and joined the household of Samuel and George Bunn, brothers of Hopewell Township, working as a servant.6<\/a><\/sup> Samuel and George were the sons of Jonathan Bunn and Ann Conlon. In 1880 George Bunn was 35 years old, married to Amy E. Scudder. His brother Samuel Fidler Bunn was 48 and still single. He married Ann E. Van Dyke in 1888.<\/p>\n Was Malinda still living with the Bunns in 1889? In February of that year she gave birth to her daughter Emma. According to the Kallikak book, when it was discovered that she was pregnant, she was thrown out of the house where she was living and abandoned by the father, whoever he was. Here is what the Kallikak book said about him:<\/p>\n \u201a\u00c4\u00faDeborah\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s [Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s] father was a young fellow, normal indeed, but loose in his morals, who, along with others, kept company with the mother while she was out at service.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This suggests to me that the father might have been a friend of George or Samuel Bunn. But although we know Malinda was living in their household in 1885, we do not know for sure where she was in 1888 when she got pregnant. And as Ms. Straney points out, even if we knew the identity of this group of friends, we still would not know for sure who Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s father was.<\/p>\n Whoever it was, the Kallikak book states that Malinda ended up in an almshouse or poorhouse where Emma was born. I suppose this information came from one of Elizabeth Kite\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s sources. But because she did not use citations, we do not know where this almshouse was located.<\/p>\n \u201a\u00c4\u00faAn unknown charitable family,\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 or in another version, \u201a\u00c4\u00faa kind woman,\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 took pity on Malinda, according to the Kallikak book, and brought her to their home.7<\/a><\/sup> But Malinda soon became pregnant again. This time, the father was definitely known, and the \u201a\u00c4\u00facharitable family\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 forced them to marry. But since that charitable family has not been identified, I have to wonder about this. There does not seem to be anyone on either side of Malinda Wolverton\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s family who was available to take an interest in her fate.<\/p>\n The rascal who seduced Malinda (or was it the other way around?) was one Charles E. Manion. He and Malinda were married in the Presbyterian Church at Trenton on November 28, 1889. At that time, Emma Wolverton was 8 months old. The identity of Malinda\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s second child is not known. As Carl wrote in his book,<\/p>\n Malinda and her husband had a second child together, and soon the entire family moved into a rented house on a nearby farm. When Malinda got pregnant with a third child, her husband denied that the baby was his. Malinda was abandoned yet again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This third child was named Frederick B. Wolverton, and he was born in 1893. It appears that Frederick was the son of the man who owned the farm where the Manions were living. That landlord was Lewis Rue Danberry (1866-1942), son of William F. Danberry and Rachel Stout of Hopewell. With Charles Manion gone, Danberry and Malinda began living openly together, and eventually, he admitted to being Frederick\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s father.8<\/a><\/sup> So Frederick Wolverton became Frederick Danberry<\/p>\n Malinda proceeded to have two more children with Lewis Danberry, out of wedlock. Daughter Lillian was born in 1896 and daughter Jessie was born in 1897, according to the 1900 census. The still-unnamed family who had rescued Malinda from the poorhouse came to her rescue again and \u201a\u00c4\u00faarranged a divorce between Emma’s mother and her stepfather, and then a remarriage to the landlord.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 The marriage took place on February 4, 1900 in Trenton, but on one condition. Danberry did not want to raise Malinda\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s other children, the ones not fathered by him, and insisted they be sent away. Accordingly, Emma, now just turned 11 years old, was sent to the Vineland Training School.9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The family was counted in the Hopewell Twp. census of 1900, and included their children Freddie 6, Lillie 3 and Jessie 2. Interestingly, it stated that Malinda had six children altogether, all of them alive. That means that Malinda had three other children with other men, one of them being Emma Wolverton, daughter of an unknown father, and two other children, probably the ones born to Charles Manion. The book and its commentators all mentioned that two of Malinda\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s illegitimate children died young.\u00ac\u2020Only two children were born after Malinda and Lewis married: Jennie in March 1904, and Howard William Danberry in 1907, making a total of five children.<\/p>\n As for what happened to Charles Manion, he doesn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t seem to have amounted to much. He was counted in the 1900 census living in the household of George B. and Carrie A. Hunt in Hopewell Township. Manion was 37, divorced, and working as a farm laborer on the Hunts\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 farm. By 1910, George Hunt\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s son Ernest was 18 and had taken over the farm work, so Manion was no longer needed there. I have not located him in the census of that year. But in 1915, the NJ State Census shows Manion living with Alfred J. and Alma N. Hunt, again in Hopewell. Manion is then 60 years old, still a laborer. Alfred Hunt was not a direct relative of George B. Hunt. It\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s just that a lot of people named Hunt lived in Hopewell.<\/p>\n Still, Manion kept moving. I cannot say where he was in 1920, but in 1930, he was working as a laborer at the advanced age of 75, in the household of Samuel and Hannah Hixson of Hopewell Twp. He called himself a widower. Perhaps that is how he thought of himself, having been divorced so many years before. But Malinda Danberry was also living in Hopewell Township at the time, and it is quite possible he knew that she was still alive. I was unable to find a record of Charles Manion\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s death. But given his age, it was probably not long after the 1930 census.<\/p>\n For all her early flightiness, Melinda Wolverton Danberry settled down to be a constant wife. She spent the rest of her life with Lewis Danberry, dying in 1932, age 63, after 32 years of marriage.<\/p>\n As for Malinda\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s daughter Emma, it turns out she wasn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t really feeble-minded at all. Had she been kept with her mother and the Danberry family, she may have grown up, married and had a family of her own. There is no way of knowing what her children would have been like. But considering that at Vineland she was known for being good with children, there is reason to think her own might have turned out very well.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Book-cover.png\")
<\/a>On\u00ac\u2020May 29th, my son, Carl Zimmer, published a book titled She Has Her Mother\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions and Potential of Heredity<\/em>. This is a book that all genealogists and geneticists will love. (I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4m not biased at all!) And there is a special reason for New Jersey genealogists to love it.<\/p>\n<\/a>The Wolverton Genealogy<\/h3>\n
The Parents of Malinda Wolverton<\/h3>\n
Emma\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s Father<\/h3>\n
Charles Manion<\/h3>\n
Lewis Danberry<\/h3>\n
Aftermath<\/h3>\n
<\/a>