Letter, Mary J. Watson, Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare, to Harriett Abbott: a machine readable edition Mary J. Watson Creation of machine-readable version: Nancy Gallagher Additional scanning and OCR: Ben Schacher Conversion to TEI.2-conformant markup: Mary Margaret Welch Additional markup by: Hope Greenberg, Shane Barney ca. 5 kilobytes University of VermontBurlington, Vermont USA

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July/2000 Letter, Mary J. Watson, Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare, to Harriett Abbott <author>Mary J. Watson</author> <editor/> </titleStmt> <editionStmt> <p/> </editionStmt> <publicationStmt><publisher/><pubPlace/><date>Febraury 25, 1927</date></publicationStmt> <notesStmt> <note/> </notesStmt> </biblFull> </sourceDesc> </fileDesc><encodingDesc> <projectDesc> <p>Prepared for the University of Vermont Electronic Text Archive.</p> </projectDesc> <editorialDecl> <p>Scanner: Visioneer 6100 (36 bit, 600x1200). Text OCR by Visioneer. </p> <p>Quote marks retained as data. All "M" and "N" dashes converted to two hyphens or one hyphen, respectively. All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line. Some text realigned to left for purposes of readability, at discretion of editors.</p> </editorialDecl> </encodingDesc><profileDesc> <creation> <date>February 25, 1927</date> </creation> <textClass> <keywords scheme="#"> <term>WE'LL LET NANCY DETERMINE THESE</term> </keywords> </textClass> </profileDesc></teiHeader> <text> <front> <div1> <bibl> <title level="u">Letter, Mary J. Watson, Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare, to Harriett Abbott February 25, 1927 Eugenics Survey of Vermont Papers, Special Pedigrees The identity of individuals and families investigated by the Eugenics Survey is confidential and cannot be revealed. Psuedonyms are used for individuals investigated.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Correction State House, Boston SANFORD BATES, Commissioner
Feb. 25, 1927.
Miss Harriet E. Abbott, In charge of Field Research, Eugenics Survey of Vermont, 489 Main St., Burlington, Vt.
My dear Miss Abbott:

First I must apologize for my delay in replying to your letter of Feb.11, 1927 to Mr. Bates, who handed it to me for reply.

Regarding [Dora Walton], would say that this woman was committed to the Women's Reformatory at Sherborn, Mass. On Dec. 8, 1913 for a five year indeterminate sentence on charge of adultery. She was placed on parole November 24, 1914, and on that date went to her mother's home ([Mrs. James Clifford]) in Readsboro, Vt. She did very poorly, started out right away to stay out late nights and go around with various men, and we had her permit to be at liberty revoked and made a strong effort to apprehend her, but without success. She was apparently wandering around in Bennington, Vt., Pownell, Vt. and the surrounding country, but the police and the sheriffs, although notified by this office, were not able to locate her so as to serve our warrant.

June 21, 1923 we received a letter from the Director of the Division of Child Guardianship here in the State House that he had received a letter from the Children's Aid Society of Bellows Falls, Vt., stating that this Mrs. [Dora Walton] was committed to the State School for Feeble Minded at Brandon, Vt., on Aug. 7, 1922.

During the period between Nov. 14, 1914 and the time her sentence expired with us, Dec. 7, 1918, her whereabouts were unknown to us most of the time, although we had made various efforts to locate her, as stated above, and rumor had it that she was not living a good life. Regarding the man who was arrested with [Dora] at the time she received her sentence to the Women's Reformatory at Sherborn, would say that he would not be in care of this department since he was sent to the County jail at Pittsfield and not to one of our State institutions, so that we would be unable to give you any information, but you might find out something about him by writing to the Sheriff at Pittsfield.

Sorry I cannot be of any greater assistance to you in this matter.Yours very truly, [Mary J. Watson] Parole Agent.

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