A eugenicist history of the county fair

^{Photo by Andy Watkins on Unsplash}

Boxes of old family photos, letters, and other memorabilia have been sitting in my attic for the past 40 years. I retired recently, and I decided it was finally time to sort through them all. I count everyone from farmers to financiers to physicists and more than one ne’er-do-well among my ancestors, who date back to the early 18th century in America. My sorting has acquainted me with many of them, including a grandfather who wrote a series of letters to his wife, Ruby, in the early 20th century.

He was a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Illinois, but I learned that he had supplemented his meager faculty salary by judging livestock at state fairs across the Midwest. But in one letter I came across something very strange: Animals weren’t the only creatures my grandfather judged.

In a letter to Ruby in 1916, he wrote, “Over 90 babies entered the contest. . . . The best baby was the finest youngster I ever saw — she scored 100! Wish I could...