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Sunday, October 12, 2014

Inbreeding Causing Deformities and Insanity in Mountains, 1914


From the Wagauga Democrat, Boone, N.C., October 15, 1914

“We have had but little immigration since the Revolution [in the mountains).” This being true, it supports the assertion that we grade high in Anglo-Saxon blood.

“What we need more than anything else almost is new blood. This county has, I am informed, an unusually high per cent of insane. Visitors to our summer school, too, notice an abnormal number of slightly deformed students, as well as an unusual number of beautiful girls.”

Admitting that the claims in this quotation are true, let us look into the causes that have led up to this demand for new blood. Did we not have a variety of good blood 75 years ago? Go back, reader, and recount the old families of the country (Most of whom have passed away) and see if they were not fine men and women, both in body and mind. Why are their descendants deformed and insane? Please read carefully until I reach the conclusion.

A few years ago, I was in a thickly populated and prosperous community that was known for miles around as “Cousin Town.” In Cousin Town was a boy who walked with the sides of his feet in front and the toes of his shoes pointing towards each other. There were several children who were so weak-eyed that they could not look on a book, and had been advised by their phy7sicians to quit school. I saw one boy who was born idiot. His head was under size and his hair stood like the quills on a disturbed porcupine.

Here is the contention. In our mountains, as elsewhere, there are too many “Cousin Towns.” Cousin Sam married cousin Kate, and cousin Sam’s brother Bill married cousin Kate’s sister Ann. These two couples raise up families that are double cousins, or cousins german, and they are the same kin as brothers and sisters; because the mothers being sisters are the same blood, and the same is true of the fathers. Now, brother Bill’s John and brother Sam’s Mary get together every day, and they are always scuffling and pinching, and soon a desperate love affair develops. Sister Ann and sister Kate talk the matter over and as the lands of the two families join, it will be real nice to set John and Mary off with a home. And again, that other fellow who wants to marry Mary is an intelligent man but his parents are not only poor but they do not believe in the church that sister Kate and sister Ann hold to.

Cousin John and cousin Mary get married and raise a family of very unfortunate children. One of the daughters marries out of the family and—while some of her children are reasonably strong, yet one is born a cripple for life. The mother loves him best of all the family, and the longer she nurses him, the more her sympathies go out to the little boy—now five years old—who lies all day on a pallet while his brothers and sisters are out at play. Finally, the parents, worn with care and reduced to poverty by the payment of doctor bills, pass over the river, and the cripple boy—now a man—is taken to the county home, and thus brother Bill and brother Sam, by marrying sister Kate and sister Ann, entailed mystery on generations to come.

The success and popularity of children are determined by their health, good breeding, good looks and intelligence, and a mother should teach her daughter that it is far better for a girl to wed a poor man, work for a living, and leave the world a legacy of valuable children, than to live in opulence and splendor and leave behind a little brigade of deforms and idiots.

I have written this article, not as a thrust at communities or individuals, but because Professor Brown’s article opened the way for something that was badly needed.

My niece is half my blood and the same kin to me as my first cousin, but my double first cousin is the same kin to me as my brother or sister.

                                --S.M. Dugger, Banner Elk, N.C.

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