Provenance

Gift of the American Eugenics Society, through Frederick Osborn, Leon Whitney, and Jonathan Marks, 1967-1995.

Preferred citation

Cite as: American Eugenics Society Records, American Philosophical Society.

Separated material

Books and journals materials transferred to Printed Materials, including:

1. Eugenical News (1916-1953, except 1939)
2. Eugenics, A Journal of Race Betterment(1928-1931)
3. Eugenics Quarterly [title later changed to Social Biology] (1954-1970, except 1968, 1969, 1971)
4. Eugenics Review (1909-1914)
5. Bibliographica Eugenica(1927-1934)
6. Blacker, C. P., Eugenics, Galton and After
7. Bonar, James, Malthus and His Work
8. Darwin, Leonard, What is Eugenics?
9. A Decade of Progress in Eugenics --Third International Congress of Eugenics
10. East, Edward M., Mankind at the Cross Roads
11. Galton, Francis, Hereditary Genius
12. Galton, Francis, Essays in Eugenics
13. Haller, Mark H., Eugenics
14. Hammons, Helen G., Hereditary Counseling
15. Holmes, Samuel J., The Trend of the Race
16. Huntington, Ellsworth, Tomorrow's Children
17. Huntington, Ellsworth, and Whitney, Leon F., The Builders of America
18. Laughlin, H. H., Eugenical Sterilization in the United States
19. Lorimer, Frank, and Osborn, Frederick, Dynamics of Population
20. Osborn, Frederick, Preface to Eugenics,1940 and 1951
21. Osborn, Frederick, The Future of Human Heredity
22. Pickens, Donald K., Eugenics and the Progressive
23. Redfield, Casper L., Control of Heredity
24. Schwesinger, Gladys C., Heredity and Environment
25. Terman, Lewis M., Genetic Studies of Genius, vols. 1 and 2
26. Wiggam, Albert Edward, The Fruit of the Family Tree

Related material

See also the Frederick Henry Osborn Papers (Ms. Coll. 24).

The autobiography of Leon F. Whitney (B W613b) contains additional information on the AES.

The Charles B. Davenport Papers (B D27) contain 114 letters regarding the American Eugenics Society and its Council, and 183 letters to or from Frederick Osborn.

Images from the AES scrapbook are included in the Dolan DNA Learning Center Eugenics Archive on the Cold Spring Harbor website.

Bibliography

African American History Note

Eugenics was inevitably entangled in many aspects of American social and political life, and particularly in setting and supporting national policy with regard to immigration and the treatment of ethnic and racial minorities. The records in this collection may prove useful to students of African American history in this regard.

Genetics Note

This collection contains materials which relate to the history of genetics.

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.]