The Secluded Life of Emma Wolverton

A.K.A. Deborah Kallikak from the Kallikak Family

An image from Henry H. Goddard’s ‘’The Kallikak Family’’, 1912. (Source:Wikimedia Commons)

Emma Wolverton was a simple woman trapped in institutions throughout her life. She was born in 1889 in an almshouse in Vineland, New Jersey. Her father, an alcoholic bankrupt, had abandoned her mother, Malinda, when she got pregnant.