“Vermont for the Vermonters”: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State

Mercedes de Guardiola’s research focuses on the history of eugenics—the pseudo-scientific field of selective human breeding that rose to prominence in the early 1900s and was the foundation of Nazi Germany—in America. Vermont was one of many American states to adopt eugenics as the basis for public policies such as family separation, institutionalization, and sterilization that targeted the most vulnerable Vermonters and led to widespread intergenerational damage. A leading expert on Vermont's eugenics movement, she testified before the state legislature during hearings in the early 2020s on the 2021 apology and ongoing responses.

“Vermont for the Vermonters” is the result of years of research and new scholarship into the story of the eugenics movement in the state. Examining developments from poor farms to mental institutions and public campaigns under Governor Mead and University of Vermont professor Henry Perkins, de Guardiola demonstrates how failing systems of healthcare and public welfare, coupled with preexisting beliefs on human worth, exploded into support for eugenics. She regrounds Vermont’s actions and policies in the larger context of the state and the nation’s public policies, allowing readers to better understand the motivations and longer-range consequences of the movement.

Order “Vermont for the Vermonters”: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State from the Vermont Historical Society and Amazon and get in touch for speaker and press inquiries.

Critical Praise

“This book expands our understanding of eugenics from a narrow moment in Vermont history to a broad pattern of ideas, policies, and programs across two centuries. As a former social studies teacher, I know that facing our history is necessary to build an inclusive, diverse, and thriving future for our state. ‘Vermont for the Vermonters’ is essential reading.”
— Vermont US Representative Becca Balint

“Mercedes de Guardiola’s history of Vermont eugenics is broad in scope, impressively researched, timely, and perhaps most importantly, respectful of the individuals and communities directly impacted by eugenic policies and practices. In clear and engaging prose, de Guardiola exposes the individuals, institutions, and organizations that promoted eugenic measures for many decades. Her work is a vital contribution to the history of poverty, race and ethnicity, and intellectual and psychiatric disability in Vermont.”
— Holly Allen, Middlebury College, author of the digital public history, The Vermont Industrial School: A Dumping Ground for Dependent and Delinquent Youth

“An important historical addition to what we know of the state-sanctioned eugenics policies of the 20th century. De Guardiola’s research shows the investment made by the State of Vermont toward targeting for persecution the most vulnerable Vermonters in the name of genealogical purity, and out of a desire to limit the economic requirements of caring for Vermont citizens with special needs or those determined to be defective because of race, creed, or color.”
— Vermont State Representative Tom Stevens, Washington Chittenden Chair, General and Housing Committee

 
 

“‘Segregation or Sterilization’: Eugenics in the 1912 Vermont State Legislative Session”

“Proper and intelligent selection—segregation or sterilization, whichever seems best in a given case—is the only remedy to prevent this, and the other states in the union from becoming burdened and disgraced by these unfortunates.”

– Dr. Don D. Grout, Superintendent of the Vermont State Hospital for the Insane, 1912

“‘Segregation or Sterilization’: Eugenics in the 1912 Vermont State Legislative Session” examines local, national, and global factors that led to the Vermont state government’s first known attempt to legalize eugenical measures, the legislative successes and failures in the session, and the impact on following eugenical campaigns.