Eugenics in My House

How a history of government-enforced sterilization turned up in the basement of our home

In 2021, when I purchased a one-hundred year-old home in Southwest Virginia, I quickly discovered a treasure trove of material culture in our basement: a mid-century postcard addressed to the building’s former landlady (when this building was a former boarding house); local editions of World War II-era newspapers; advertisements for a business that once operated around the corner (where there is now a four-lane traffic intersection).

But by far the largest historical objects in our basement were three six-foot-tall, green, metal cabinets, each one mysteriously stamped with the words “Property of Western State Hospital.”

I only vaguely knew what Western State Hospital was. Wasn’t that a state mental hospital where patients were involuntarily committed? To learn more, I picked up a copy of historian Elizabeth Catte’s book Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia.

Catte explains that, unt…