Trait Files documents

01 family tree folder 7 thumb
05 heredity for three generations 2 thumb
08 pedigree card 01 1 thumb
11 monson state hospital thumb
06 k.k 8 thumb
01 radicalism among the polish jews 2 thumb
02 literary digest 1 thumb
00 baltic states thumb
00 negro thumb
00 feebleminded thumb
03 single trait sheets 1 thumb
09 family history of ra kings park 4 thumb
04 italian workers measurements 3 thumb
00 new guinea thumb
02 godall to ero 1 thumb
01 estabrook study 11 thumb
17 de history 3 thumb
02 k history 2 thumb
02 jukes family analysis 5 thumb
08 d file 2 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.