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.

A charitable family rescued Malinda, offering her work at their house, where she could live with her baby. When Malinda became pregnant again, the family insisted she got married, which she did. After divorcing her husband during her fourth pregnancy, the child’s father agreed to marry her if she got rid of her three elder children. Malinda’s benefactors helped young Wolverton go to the Vineland Training School when she was eight years old.

Vineland Training School

In 1888, S. Olin Garrison founded the New Jersey Home for Education and Care of Feeble-Minded Children (later the Vineland Training School). Garrison was a pioneer in special education. He was determined to give humane treatment to the weak-minded children, in contrast to the cold and rigid institutions to which most of these children were abandoned during those times. The motto of the school was: “Happiness first, and all else follows.” Through education, training, playing, and interacting with nature, these children…