History Note
Author didn’t disguise contempt
for her subjects
by Luther Granquist
In his 1910 biennial report,
Dr. Arthur C. Rogers, the superintendent of the Minnesota School
for the Feeble Minded and Colony for Epileptics at Faribault, requested
funding for field workers to compile detailed family histories of
residents at that institution. Rogers emphasized the need for accurate
collection of information which would be of scientific value, facts
which would, as he stated, “promote the cause of prevention” of “mental
deficiency.” The Minnesota Legislature provided funds for
the expenses involved and the Eugenics Records Office in New York
provided two trained field workers. During the next several years,
Sadee Devitt and Marie Curial traveled throughout Minnesota and compiled
histories of 549 families of persons who had been sent to Faribault.
Rogers died early in 1917.
His research assistant, Maud Merrill, compiled an account of several
of these families living in an area of ravines and caves near the
Mississippi River, probably in Goodhue County. She stated that this
account was one of a series that Rogers had planned. He was named
senior author when the book was published in 1919. The book’s subtitle, A True Story of the
Social Aspects of Feeble-Mindedness, suggests some kind of scientific presentation,
but the title, Dwellers in the Vale of Siddem, which refers to the location of
the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, proves otherwise. Merrill did not
disguise her contempt for most members of these families, whom she called “grandchildren
of the devil.” She noted that other people in the area called them “timber
rats” and “bark eaters.” She called them “ugly cancers
of the social system” and a nest of “social incompetents, degenerates,
defectives, and criminals.” She used descriptions such as “miserable
reprobate,” “stupid,” and “shiftless.” All this
to warn the people of Minnesota that “from the standpoint of eugenic consideration
the existence of such communities as the Vale of Siddem makes our present efforts
to care for the feeble-minded quite idle.”
After Rogers died, the field
studies did not continue. Nothing further was done with the family
history data until, years later, Sheldon and Elizabeth Reed, geneticists
at the University of Minnesota, updated it and published a detailed
analysis.
Merrill went to Stanford,
got a Ph.D., and spent an illustrious career there revising the
Stanford-Binet intelligence test.
Dwellers never attained the
notoriety of comparable books like The Jukes or The Kallikak Family,
but it stands today as a stark reminder of the attitude in that era
which well-regarded and highly respected professionals had toward
many persons with disabilities and their families. Dwellers in the
Vale of Siddem is available on the Developmental Disabilities Council
website at www.mnddc.org/past/pdf-index.html A reprinted version
is available at www.kessinger.net
The History Note is a monthly
column sponsored by the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental
Disabilities,
www.mnddc.org or www.mncdd.org and www.partnersinpolicymaking.com ![end of story]()
