William Curtis Farabee (1865–1925), the second individual to obtain a doctorate in physical anthropology from Harvard University, engaged in a wide range of anthropological work during his time as a professor at Harvard and then as a researcher at the University Museum, Philadelphia, but is best known for his work in human genetics and his ethnographic and geographic work in South America.
Early life and education
William Curtis Farabee was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania on February 7, 1865. He attended public schools, and enrolled at the California State Normal School from 1885 to 1887. He was an 1894 graduate of Waynesburg College.
He married Sylvia Manilla Holdren in 1897.
Genetics research
Farabee demonstrated that Mendelian genetics operate in man. The founder of genetics, Gregor Mendel, published the results of his studies on pea plants and heredity in 1865. The work of Mendel was not recognized for its importance until it was rediscovered in 1900. During the intervening 35 years, the "discovery of chromosomes and their behavior in cell division and gametogenesis, and intensive study of cell biological variation, and…a conceptual framework for a theory of heredity, development, and evolution" all came about. "The time was ripe for Mendelism" according to Stern. Mendel had been interested in seeing if his work with dominant and recessive characteristics was applicable to men, but it was Farabee's work that confirmed this and helped found the study of human genetics.
Farabee was a student of William E. Castle at Harvard. His dissertation, entitled Heredity and Sexual Influences In Meristic Variation: A Study of Digital Malformations in Man, was published in 1903. The bulk of his research was regarding a hereditary conditions that primarily afflicts the hands of individuals, entitled Brachydactyly.
Brachydactyly is a dominant genetic trait that is characterized by shortened fingers and shortened stature. Farabee noticed that this trait ran in families. For his dissertation research, Farabee chose a family affected by this trait and followed their pedigree back five generations. By doing so he showed that the ratio of those with and without brachydactyly followed a pattern explained by Mendel's pattern of inheritance. The children of an abnormal (A) individual, and a normal (N) individual, had a close to fifty percent chance of being abnormal. Farabee stated that an abnormal individual typically would have a genotype of AN, and the family's practice of exogamy meant that their spouse would have a genotype of NN. By crossing the two, ANxNN, the offspring could be normal or abnormal with an equal chance of either. Because the trait is dominant, if an individual does not carry the trait, they are homozygous normal and have no risk of passing the trait on to their children, which Farabee also studied in his pedigrees.
Farabee also published on the occurrence of recessive traits in humans. While in the South, he met several albino African-American individuals, and after inquiring into their family background, noticed that the albino trait followed the 3:1 ratio in the second generation that is typical of recessive genotypes.
Travels in South America
Following his work in genetics, Farabee began working in South America. His goal was to record the cultural diversity and obtain items for the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, where he was employed as a researcher and curator. He made three trips to the Amazon basin, each lasting several years.
While in South America, Farabee traveled into very remote regions. He helped to fill in maps of locations where there had not been any previous exploration. On several occasions he was the first man of European descent that the natives had seen. In other locations he witnessed the atrocities that were taking places by slave hunters, such as the story of Simasiri, a translator for the expedition, who witnessed his family sold into slavery or killed by the traders.
The notes taken by Farabee were regarding the many different aspects of the cultures he encountered, such as dance, cosmology, marriage, dress, and particularly their varying languages. They are detailed accounts, and were often obtained from the villagers themselves. The ethnologies followed a set outline of characteristics to record, but in spite of this there is a great deal of personal detail and rich account of the people.