Christopher Giangarlo
COUN 530
Assignment 3
Who were the Kallikaks?
The Kallikak family was the assigned name to a family from New Jersey who were the
subject of psychologist Henry Goddard’s 1912 book The Kallikak Family: Study in the
Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. Goddard was also the Director of the Research Laboratory of
the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey for Feeble-minded Girls and Boys that was opened
in 1906 (Eugnenics Archive) where he met Emma Wolverton and she, and her family became the
subject of his research. The study focused on the offspring of a New Jersey Revolutionary War
hero through six generations, he was known as Martin Kallilak. There were two women he was
involved with, one a bar maid and referred to as feebleminded and the other he married, a good
