Jukes and Kallikaks

Jukes and Kallikaks

by Justin Durand

Not many people remember it now, but biologists used to like the idea of eugenics, improving humans by controlling who is allowed to reproduce. In that whole muddle the Jukes and Kallikaks were iconic.

In 9th grade biology our textbooks had a chapter on genetics. Mendel and all that. I was already a fledgling genealogist. I loved the little charts that illustrated dominant and recessive genes. That’s when I assimilated the convention that squares on the charts represent men, and circles represent women.

Source: Michelle Mischke, MIT OpenCourseWare

But the genealogical gold was in the Jukes and Kallikaks. These were two “families” that had been the subject of genetic studies in the early 20th century. Our text included them to make the point eugenics had been a thing. A long time ago.

The names used for these folks, Jukes and Kallikak, were pseudonyms used to protect their privacy.

We got little summaries, in a sidebar. Just enough to whet a genealogical appetite. In my opinion it was the best part of our Biology textbook, and far too brief.

The Jukes family were “a race of criminals, paupers and harlots”, descended from “Max”, who settled on the New York frontier in the early 18th century. One of his sons married “Ada”, “mother of criminals”.

Then there were the Kallikaks. They were descended from “Martin Kallikak”, who had served in the Continental army. On his way home from the war he had a dalliance with a feeble-minded bar maid. Their descendants were a “race of degenerates.” When he got home he married a respectable Quaker woman. Their descendants were upstanding citizens.

How odd, I thought. Martin Kallikak must have had no good or bad himself if his children took after their mothers. It was a puzzle to me for a long time. How did no one ever notice that at the time?

It would be interesting if someone now were to create a genealogy project that showed the actual families, with all their complex links. I’m not going to be the one to do it but I wouldn’t mind wasting a few hours clicking around.

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American Exceptionalism

American Exceptionalism

by Justin Durand ♥ 1 Comment

White supremacists make a basic mistake about history. They imagine we live in the same world our ancestors did. They’re just wrong.

Our ancestors in America had to learn how to live on the Frontier. The Indians knew how to live here, but the settlers didn’t. In the process of adapting the settlers created a new culture. They stopped being Europeans and became a different people with a different culture.

This idea is the “Frontier Thesis”, an idea popularized by Frederick Jackson Turner (1861-1932) in his book The Frontier in American History (1920). The basic idea is the frontier gave Americans a unique character and culture.

The Frontier Thesis is part of a larger narrative framework that America is different (“American exceptionalism”).

Modern historians generally don’t like these meta-narratives that supposedly explain the forces behind historical events. And, it’s clear just on the face the Frontier Thesis is essentially and almost completely a White Anglo narrative. Americans Indians wouldn’t see it that way. The Spanish in California and the Southwest wouldn’t see it that way. And the immigrant populations in the cities wouldn’t see it that way.

Yet, the idea of an America formed by the frontier lingers in the popular imagination. The rise of the Frontier Thesis is the main reason we had so many Westerns on television in the early 1960s, and its decline is the main reason those shows disappeared in the 70s.

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Defining Family

Defining Family

by Justin Durand

In modern culture wars one side thinks there is something sacred and eternal about our “traditional” family structure, while the other side wants to experiment. Medievalists just laugh.

I think it’s safe to say most people don’t realize how family structures have evolved through history, even in our European diaspora. We don’t live in the same world our ancestors did.

I’m always jazzed when I run into this idea outside the world of historians.

And here it is, in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (1997). One of my favorites. How did I miss this?

“In the last few decades, we have come to realize that the image of the family we have been cherishing since at least Victorian times is only one of many possible alternatives. According to the historian Le Roy Ladurie, a rural French family in the late Middle Ages was made up by whoever lived under the same roof and shared the same meals. This might have included people actually related by blood, but also farmhands and other persons who strayed in to help with farm work and were given shelter. Apparently no further distinction was made among these individuals; whether related or not they were seen to belong to the same domus, or house made of stone and mortar, which was the unit that mattered, rather than the biological family.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 85-86)

This stuff is old hat to medievalists. This is the same sort of idea that led to naming noble families by the name of their principle estate. The von Habsburg family originated at Habsburg castle in Switzerland. That sort of thing.

We Love Stories

We Love Stories

by Justin Durand ♥ 1 Comment

Have you ever thought about the ways all stories are the same? They’re all about a “descent” followed by a “return”. Think about Joseph Campbell and The Hero’s Journey. 

Genealogists love stories. They’re the very essence of why we collect our kin, so I think it’s worth pushing our skill and understanding. We should want to get better at stories, the same way we get better at research as we gain more skill.

I have YouTube video about stories in my bookmarks because I’m fascinated by this idea of descent and return: “Every Story is the Same” by Will Schoder (Nov. 23, 2016). A good intro to this idea. Click through to the video. You’ll love it.

Dan Harmon tells us how to practice seeing the pattern of descent and return in stories. He’s talking to writers, but he could just as well be talking to genealogists:

“Start thinking of as many of your favorite movies as you can, and see if they apply to this pattern. Now think of your favorite party anecdotes, your most vivid dreams, fairy tales, and listen to a popular song (the music, not necessarily the lyrics). Get used to the idea that stories follow that pattern of descent and return, diving and emerging. Demystify it. See it everywhere. Realize that it’s hardwired into your nervous system, and trust that in a vacuum, raised by wolves, your stories would follow this pattern.” (“Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit“, at channel101.fandom.com, visited April 3, 2020).

I first encountered this idea as an undergraduate, in a Greek Mythology class. I did my final paper on the myth of Arachne (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 6). Arachne was a talented weaver. She boasted she was more talented than the goddess Athena. Athena challenged her to a contest. Athena wove a tapestry showing the punishment of mortals who had defied the gods. Arachne wove a tapestry showing gods abusing mortals. Predictably, Athena destroyed Arachne’s tapestry. Arachne hung herself. Then Athena turned Arachne into a spider.

I read the myth as a story about the contest between humans and gods for the right to weave human destiny. Arachne confronted the goddess, and paid a penalty for it. Descent and return; changed by the experience. I still think about it often. She was turned into a spider. She was changed by the experience; a huge price to pay. But she and her kind are still weaving. We humans won an important piece of the battle.

Parting Shot

Some of my friends might be interested to know what brought this idea to the forefront today. Is it something to do with the devastation of the Corona virus? No. Something much more in line with my usual patterns of thought.

I was listening to the Sunstone podcast last night. Somewhat unusual for me. They’re the folks who say there’s “More than One Way to Mormon.”

One episode caught my attention, and turned out to be well worth the investment of time. Episode 51: Returning to Church Without Returning to Church (Feb. 3, 2020). “Stephen Carter argues that eventually returning to church is essential—but for reasons that would surprise both orthodox Mormons and post-Mormons.”

The surprising reason is that the return is the necessary conclusion of the Hero’s Journey.

More surprising to me is that in 30 years of using this analytical framework for stories and for personal experiences, it never once occurred to me that it would apply here. I’m intrigued. One podcast on this topic was not enough.

Carroll Place

Carroll Place

by Justin Durand ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

My dad would have been 100 today. That seems striking to me but marking a parent’s 100th birthday will happen to many people. I just come to it a bit earlier than most of my generation because Dad was 35 years older than me.

Headstone

I was going to mark his birthday by getting a headstone. He doesn’t have one. And his ashes are lost. Unbelievable. His “companion” was this woman, Donna. I remember when she was just the gal who worked the soda fountain at Mesa Drug. After Dad died she had his ashes. I’ve assumed his ashes were scattered on her cemetery plot after she died. I checked just to be sure. It turns out Dad’s and Donna’s caretakers don’t have any idea what happened to his ashes. So, rule out a headstone.

Sons of the American Revolution

My next thought is to do a Memorial Application for Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). That’s doable. I didn’t think it would be since I’m not a blood relative, but I checked. They tell me it shouldn’t be a problem. It will take much longer than a headstone, but that’s fine. It is what it is.

I think Dad would like this. He would never have joined himself. I don’t think it would have occurred to him. He did Shriners, Freemasons, Mesa County Sheriff’s Posse, and church. Even so, I recognized instantly that he would be gratified by his kind of memorial. His father and grandfather were both named George Washington Place. Growing up, Grandma Place told me, “It’s [your dad’s] heritage; remember that.” He felt the same.

When I was a kid the lamp beside my bed was Washington praying before the Battle of Valley Forge. It had belonged to Grandpa Place then to Dad. I wish I still had the lamp. It was cast bronze, which means it was hollow. It got crushed in one of my moves. I found this picture of it on eBay.

SAR Application

The first step to starting the application process was to check whether Dad’s Revolutionary War ancestor is already in the SAR or DAR databases. Thomas Place (1732-1814), of Hinesburg, Vermont. Nope, not there. This is going to take awhile because it will mean doing the whole line from scratch.

And, while I think I have the right line, I’m not 100% certain.

When I was first getting started in genealogy, Dad was surprised. He said his [some female relative] already did “all that” when she joined [some lineage society]. I thought I remembered the relative was his cousin Laura when she joined the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). But I can’t find that he had a cousin Karen and there is no DAR record of this line. As I look now, maybe it was his aunt Julia (Place) Perrin in Bay City, Michigan or his cousin Julia (Place) Shephard in San Diego, California when she joined Mayflower Descendants.

Dad told me he was a descended from Lt. Gen. Solomon Place (War of 1812), who was supposedly made a Freemason by George Washington himself. That can’t be quite right. Dad seems to have been descended from the General’s cousin. And, if the General was inducted into the Masons by George Washington then Washington must have been at the very end of his life and Solomon Place must have been still relatively young. Washington died in 1799 when Solomon Place was only 29, and hadn’t yet even started his military career. My impression hearing the story was that Dad was struggling to remember and knew he might not be getting it exactly right.

So, I’ve begun. I have these preliminary pieces. A year from now I hope to have a completed SAR Memorial Membership for my dad.