Trait Files documents

04 m abstract 2 thumb
05 twin form 04 1 thumb
01 family tree folder 01 7 thumb
14 s.s 9 thumb
05 family tree folder 3 thumb
08 family backgrounds 18 thumb
06 family tree folder 01 1 thumb
08 percentage of foreign born maps 1 thumb
03 dwarfism clippings thumb
01 bibliography 5 thumb
01 disease inheritance from slavery 2 thumb
10 r family trait forms 2 thumb
02 individual analysis card 2 6 thumb
03 the training school 01 4 thumb
07 trait forms 5 thumb
02 family tree folder 5 thumb
04 g.b. pedigree thumb
03 twin form 02 thumb
04 italian workers measurements 1 thumb
01 criminality data set 13 thumb

The Eugenics Record Office was first and foremost a “repository and clearing house” for eugenics data. Through the “systematic” study of human heredity, the Office amassed an incredible quantity of files, forms, and assorted clipping related to a wide range of human traits. The bulk of this material comprised the “Trait Files,” a massive and rigidly organized index of human traits that sought to sort and rank human beings according to thousands of different attributes, from profession (“Teachers,” “Missionaries”) to mental ability (“Idiocy,” “Feeblemindedness”) to race (“Negro-Chinaman,” “Mulattoes”) and personality (“Sense of Humor, “Leadership”). But this data didn’t just sit around in the ERO’s archives. It was actively used to provide “scientific” justifications for a wide range of policies, from immigration restriction to sterilization and anti-miscegenation, that were shaped by leaders of the Eugenics Record Office.