The Eugenics Survey of Vermont: Participants & Partners
MARTHA M. WADMAN
Eugenics Survey Field Investigator, 1928-1929
Martha Wadman, a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, was hired by the Eugenics
Survey in September, 1928 to replace Francis Conklin as Field Investigator.
Wadman's experience as a "recorder and psychologist" at Foxboro State Hospital
in Massachusetts provided the Eugenics Survey with expertise in IQ testing
and psychiatric social work that her predecessors lacked. Wadman conducted
IQ tests on school children in the rural towns of Sandgate and Readsboro,
directed the
"Key Family Study"
in Lincoln and Williston, Vermont, began the
"Brandon Waiting List"
study of referrals to the Brandon State School for the Feebleminded, and
conducted a mental survey of the
Women at the Riverside Reformatory in Rutland
. Her studies provided the Eugenics Survey's contribution to the Committee
on the Human Factor for the Vermont Commission on Country Life. She left
the Survey in the Fall of 1929 to continue graduate study.