The Ben Ishmael Tribe

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Permalink Reply by Holly on May 15, 2008 at 1:41pm

Just heard from Becky Cape at the Lilly. She says:
"I did find that we have a periodical published in Indianapolis at the end of the 19th century called The Ishmaelite:
Howland, Hewitt H. (Hewitt Hanson), 1863-1944 ed.
Title: The Ishmaelite.
Published: [Indianapolis, Ind.] : Mount Nebo Press, 1897-99.
Publishing history: Vol. 1 (Jan. 1897)-vol. 5 (May 1899).
Contributors: Howland, Hewitt H. (Hewitt Hanson), 1863-1944 ed.
Frequency: Monthly
Notes: Title from cover.

B-LILLY
Location: STACKS-- AP2 .I83
Holdings: 1-5
Holdings: 1897-1899"

Also, she says:
"Also, our Butler mss. Has information on eugenics in the 1930s (http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/subfile/butlerinv.html)."

I can't remember if I cataloged this collection or just wrote up the catalog record for the OPAC. Box 11 looks very interesting. Also, note the collection description here. In the list of correspondents, please note the name of one William J. Moenkhaus.

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Permalink Reply by Holly on May 15, 2008 at 2:00pm

Time-out ate my addenda: Looking up "The Ishmaelite" online, it seems to be just a literary mag.

ETA: *sigh* or maybe not. See opinion of The Ishamelite's contents here (about halfway down the page).

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on May 15, 2008 at 2:53pm

Ha! I saw what he was professor of the other day, but it escapes me. Linguistics?

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Lee Canner on May 15, 2008 at 2:56pm

Moenkhaus? Zoology.

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on May 15, 2008 at 2:56pm

Right, I first found the reference to the mag at the EMS site. The maintainer is specifically looking for sources to buttress the idea of the Islamic-settler concept. If it's just an orientalizing literary 'zine then maybe it's not surprising to see pomes on Eastern topics, so I'm leaning to thinking there's some reading in going on there.

Which is fine, of course, but not something that moves the meter, necessarily.

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Permalink Reply by Holly on May 15, 2008 at 2:59pm

Yeah, I agree. It's like the vision of an Odalisque to represent the new Bohemianism. Eastern is exotic and edgy. Not necessarily eastern.

Well durnnit.

Butler mss. might be interesting to see.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Lee Canner on May 15, 2008 at 3:09pm

I would also add that this author seems to be "wanting to believe", especially in the remark about the "Arabic sounding names". Farr is an English name, Rabb is German, and there are records of people with the last name Latta immigrating to the US from Scotland in the early 18th century.

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Permalink Reply by mike whybark on May 15, 2008 at 3:26pm

Right, those are the well-known Araby Scots.

I KID.

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Permalink Reply by Spencer (Shecky) Sundell on June 1, 2008 at 10:56pm

Hi Stephen --

The earliest Ishmael family members in Indiana that I can find in the census are three heads of households in 1830 in Switzerland County in the extreme SE of the state. This does put them in the right area but they're all listed as "free white" though. As I mentioned above though there's no way to link these individuals currently with any nomadic group. It's just proof that people with that last name did live in the area.

Nice job, going to the census. It's well worth noting in this context that the Ben Ishmael group was at least tri-racial -- and included whites. But you're quite right that the mere existence of the name in that area is hardly proof of anything but the presence of the name. On the other hand, let's face it: white folks with the name of Ishmael in that area does seem mighty unusual. Perhaps they were Jewish? Wonder if there's anyway to ascertain that...?

From what I can tell every single piece of info we've come across shows the obvious influence of McCulloch's original 1888 pamphlet which was written in order to show why these people should be sterilized and have their children taken away from them. Even the late 19th and early 20th sources cited show the obvious stamp of this pamphlet. ...[S]o far we have a story started by a spiteful Victorian with very few concrete corroborating facts.

I agree completely that the eugenicist provenance of much of the material must be considered very carefully indeed. However, there are what I think are substantial indications that the core factual basis for the existence of the Ishmaelites are more than a racist fantasy -- irrespective of the interpretation and moral condemnation resulting from those core facts on the part of the eugencists.

McCulloch's original source material was approximately 7,000 pages of documents evidently compiled by J. Frank Wright (per Leaming's essay, fn. 1). It does appear that Wright was in active cahoots with McCulloch and his band of not-so-merry eugenicists.

Fwiw, Leaming (himself active in the 1960s civil rights movement and pastor for black congregations of the Unitarian Church) felt that there is "no reason to suspect deliberate distortion in the Wright manuscript, since many of the sources would have been subject to judicial and institutional review, and Wright was apparently preparing the collection for the use of eugenicists, many of whom prided themselves on their scientific method. Much of the document then may be considered reliable when used with care, discounting the pervasive extreme bias of value judgments."

I think Leaming definitely gives the Indiana courts and state institutions of the time far too much credit for impartiality and assiduous fact-checking -- especially when it comes to a bunch of (alleged) race-mixing paupers and shanty-town dwellers.

Nevertheless, even as Leaming echoes our own concerns on this count, he does make something of a point, wot?

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Permalink Reply by Spencer (Shecky) Sundell on June 1, 2008 at 11:04pm

Dang. I look forward to that, indeed.

I admit I'm extremely surprised to see Deutsch describe this as springing from a "poor white family."

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Permalink Reply by Spencer (Shecky) Sundell on June 1, 2008 at 11:10pm

Just for the benefit of others who come later...

cacogenic (Adj.) Pertaining to or causing degeneration in the offspring produced.

Also, the mention of several hundred lineages is fully consistent with the earliest descriptions of the Ishmaelites.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Lee Canner on June 1, 2008 at 11:17pm

I'll have a bit more to say on this whole subject as I get time this week...but as far as the whiteness of the Ishmael family, do a search for the archives of the genealogical discussion list Ishmael-L, many of the existing (white) members of the Ishmael clan seem very surprised, amazed, and even aghast at any suggestion that they were ever anything else.

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