Engineering a new aristocracy of "human thoroughbreds" might sound like something from a science fiction novel, but at the beginning of the 20th century, many Americans sought to do just that through the new pseudoscience of Eugenics. Eugenics, a process that sought to "purify" the human race through scientifically calculated breeding, became immensely popular in the United States and resulted in a smattering of scientific societies and contests to determine the family with the purest genes. Read more about it!

The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.

The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.