Eugenics Survey Field Investigator, 1927-1928
The Eugenics Survey records reveal little of Francis Conklin. Dr. Perkins
hired her in 1927 to help Harriett Abbott complete the pedigree studies
of Vermont families begun in 1925 and to compile statistical summaries on
the incidence of "feeblemindedness" and "insanity" deduced from the family
case records. Like Harriett Abbott, Francis Conklin had trained at the Eugenics
Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, where she had worked on statistical
applications in eugenics research.
In 1928, Conklin began a "Study of the Better Branches" of selected families previously cast as "degenerate" and prepared a statistical report, "The Children of Feebleminded and Insane Parents," both of which Perkins published in the Survey's Third Annual Report (1929) . An earlier version of the latter study appeared in Eugenical News in 1928 under the title, "How Large Families Do Feebleminded Parents Have?"
Francis Conklin left the Eugenics Survey in the fall of 1928 to continue graduate studies in Boston.