A Guide to the Genetics Collections at the APS
Major Collections
American Eugenics Society Records
The American Eugenics Society was organized in 1921, following the Second International Conference on Eugenics held in New York City in that year. At first called the Eugenics Committee of the U.S.A., its name was shortened and adopted in the form above in 1925. Its offices were in New Haven, Connecticut, until the early 1950s, when it was accorded office space and financial support by the Rockefeller-funded Population Council in New York. The papers of the Society, covering the years 1925 to 1972, were deposited in the Library of the A.P.S. by Frederick Osborn, who was the long-rime secretary of the Society, 1928-72. In that last year the American Eugenics Society was reorganized and renamed The Society for the Study of Social Biology, and its periodical became simply Social Biology.
The AES Papers comprise 50 boxes of correspondence, manuscripts, and other materials, and include an extensive collection of photographs and a file of index cards carrying the information about a eugenic study made in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. A scrapbook entitled 'Samples' includes printed forms used by the Society, and various pamphlets. Three volumes of the Frederick Osborn correspondence are also included. These contain memos, minutes of meetings, correspondence, press clippings, and drafts of articles by Osborn. Five notebooks contain materials relating to the five conferences held at Princeton between 1964 and 1969 on the general subject of "Population Generics and Demography." There is also a loose-leaf notebook titled "AES: Position and Aims of the AES, 1961 Statement." This notebook documents the important changes in the goals and emphases of the Society beginning in the 1930s, involving a shift from hereditarian views toward a more environmentalist view. This shift was one for which Osborn himself took much credit. Garland Allen claims that this collection of the AES Papers reveals that Osborn did not change his fundamental views and was not so fully responsible for the evident decline and moderation of American eugenics during the 1930s. [See Barry Mehler and Garland E. Allen in the Mendel Newsletter 14:9-15, 1977.]
The Davenport Papers contain 114 letters regarding the American Eugenics Society and its Council, and 183 letters to or from Frederick Osborn.
Selected files
View the key to abbreviations
| Adams, D.E. | 2:1926-27 | Sermon (c): "Eugenics: personal religion as a factor in race progress" (11 pp.) |
| Adams, F.F. | 3:1926-27 | Sermon (c): "Eugenics: well-born" (8 pp.) |
| Amer. Eugenics Party | 19: 1962-68 | PI, EU, RACE |
| Bajema, C.J. | 58:1965-67 | BD, C, HG, CS, FS (U. Mich.), RS, research programs |
| Geneticist-demographer Training Program | 17: 1965-66 | RS, PG, SO, FS, Demogr. |
| Harvard Growth Study, Third | 59: 1966-70 | RS, BG, EM, SO (Pop. Coun.) |
| Johnson, R. H. | 23:1927-40 | AES, C (state: Pa., Utah), BD |
| Kirkpatrick, E. A. | 31:1927-31 | AES, C (Mass.), PI |
| Lindbergh, Chas. A. | 25:1952-72 | AES, SO, CG, CS, EU, HG |
| Milbank Mem. Fund | 99:1959-72 | AES, SS, RS, CS |
| Osborn, Fred. H. | 178:1928-72 | AES, RS (Milbank Mem. Fnd.), Pop. Counc., Carnegie Corp., RV, WWII, PB, UPB, HE, NRC, HE, BG, PG, EU, HG, dernogr., PI (birth control) |
| Photographs | AES, EU | |
| Population Council | 108:1951-73 | RS, AES, SS, CS, BS |
| Project Talent | 18:1967-69 | AES, C, PG, RS (Bajema), HG |
| Second Intnatl. Congr. Eugenics | 4:3921-24 | ICEu2, C |
| Shutesbury-Leverett Survey | 11 fold.:1915-28 | BD, HG (pedigrees), maps, photos |
| Soc. for the Study of Social Biology | 4 fold.:1972-74 | SO (SSSE), BS, newsletter |