Chasing a Myth: How the Anglo-American Vermonters' Ties to the Land Informed the Focus of the Vermont Eugenics Survey, 1925–1931

In the formation of Vermont’s statehood in 1791, came the simultaneous creation of the myth of the men that shaped Vermont, extricated it from the Abenaki Native Americans and the French Canadians, and hewed an agricultural... [ view full abstract ]

In the formation of Vermont’s statehood in 1791, came the simultaneous creation of the myth of the men that shaped Vermont, extricated it from the Abenaki Native Americans and the French Canadians, and hewed an agricultural kingdom from what was once just a wilderness. Throughout Vermont history, there has continued a special concentration on the land and the state’s relationship with its land. By the turn of the twentieth century, this relationship was central to the definition of the Anglo-American Vermonter. I contend that the myth of Anglo- American pioneer as irrevocably tied to the land is part of what informed the focus of the Vermont Eugenics Survey between 1925 and 1931. Although the Survey sought to remove Vermont’s “inferior stock” of Abenakis and French Canadians through a process of sterilization and an eradication of their heredity capabilities, it also aimed to clear the land that the Abenakis and French Canadians occupied in able to return it to the hands of Vermont’s pioneer stock.