Trait Files documents

00 reference sheet thumb
02 family of ad kings park 4 thumb
2 measurements thumb
03 john hopkins hospital 1 thumb
03 n family single trait sheets 7 thumb
10 assorted giantism pictures 7 thumb
04 a mendelian family tree 2 thumb
05 family tree folder 4 thumb
00 pauperism thumb
10 fe file 2 thumb
02 german paper summary 5 thumb
01 bg kings park 8 thumb
04 bird chief 2 thumb
07 ab kings park 6 thumb
00 baltic states thumb
07 family tree folder 03 1 thumb
14 color pedigree 1 thumb
08 family backgrounds 1 thumb
02 blond indians of the darien jungle 3 thumb
03 wentz to laughlin 9.25 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.