For more than a century, one American family has been used as a warning about what can happen when poverty, crime, neglect, and instability seem to repeat themselves from one generation to the next.
Another family has been held up as its opposite: educated, accomplished, influential, and filled with ministers, doctors, lawyers, academics, and public officials.
The first became known as the Jukes.
The second was the family of theologian Jonathan Edwards.
Modern social media often presents their stories as if they were part of a dramatic real-life experiment. One family supposedly descended from a man named Max Jukes and produced thieves, prostitutes, prisoners, alcoholics, and seven murderers. The other descended from Jonathan Edwards and produced generations of successful professionals.
The message is usually simple: one parent can shape five generations.
It is a compelling idea.
It is also a serious oversimplification.
The Jukes story is rooted in a real nineteenth-century investigation, and the famous claim involving seven killings does have a historical source. Jonathan Edwards was also a real person, the father of 11 children, and his extended family did include many highly educated and influential descendants.
But the two families were never part of a controlled study, “Max Jukes” was not the literal patriarch of everyone counted in the statistics, and later writers transformed the original research into something far more deterministic than its author intended.
The real story is more complicated, and far more revealing.
It began with prisoners in New York
In the 1870s, American reformer Richard Louis Dugdale was studying prisons in New York State when he noticed that several inmates appeared to be related.
That observation led him to investigate the wider family network.
In 1877, he published The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity, a book that would become one of the most famous social genealogies in American history.
One detail is essential from the beginning: Jukes was not the family’s real name.
Dugdale used pseudonyms.
The people discussed in the book were given fictional names, partly to protect their identities. Over time, however, those pseudonyms began to be treated almost as though they described one clearly defined biological dynasty.
They did not.
Dugdale documented 709 individuals in his original study. Of those, 540 were described as descendants of women he called the “Juke sisters,” while another 169 were connected through marriage or cohabitation.
He believed the broader network might have included roughly 1,200 people if every branch could have been traced.
That already tells us something important: this was not a neat family tree descending from one man.
It was a complicated social and genealogical network.
So who was “Max Jukes”?
Modern versions of the story often describe Max Jukes as an irresponsible or immoral patriarch whose descendants inherited his failures.
That is not an accurate description of Dugdale’s work.
“Max” was a fictional label applied to one person in the reconstructed genealogy. He was not simply the biological ancestor of every person included in the famous statistics.
In fact, modern historians have pointed out that the very idea of a single, unified “Jukes family” became more rigid over time than it had been in Dugdale’s original research.
A 2024 historical analysis published in the Journal of the History of Biology examined how the Jukes narrative evolved and how later writers turned a messy network of relationships into something that looked much more like a single inherited bloodline.
That transformation matters.
Once a complicated social network becomes a story about one founding father, it becomes much easier to claim that everything that followed was inherited from him.
But that is not what the original evidence showed.
Were there really seven murderers?
This is one of the most repeated claims in the viral version of the story.
The historical source is more nuanced.
Dugdale’s statistics described large numbers of people who had been imprisoned, committed theft, relied on public assistance, or were otherwise classified using the social categories of his era. His summary also stated that seven lives had been lost through homicide.
That statement appears to be the origin of the modern phrase “seven murderers.”
But the two claims are not exactly the same.
Saying that seven lives were lost through homicide does not necessarily mean that seven direct descendants were convicted murderers.
That distinction has largely disappeared as the story has been retold.
There is another problem as well.
These statistics were collected almost 150 years ago, using nineteenth-century definitions and methods. Categories such as pauperism, criminality, vice, disease, and prostitution were often recorded through the moral assumptions of the time.
They were not measured according to modern epidemiological, sociological, or genetic standards.
So the responsible conclusion is not that scientists proved one family “produced seven killers.”
The accurate conclusion is that historical records associated with the Jukes study reported seven deaths by homicide within the wider population being examined.
That is a much more cautious statement, but it is also a more truthful one.
Dugdale did not believe crime was simply inherited
This may be the most surprising part of the story.
Because his book included the word “heredity” in its title, Dugdale is sometimes portrayed as an early advocate of genetic determinism.
His actual position was more complicated.
He believed heredity could matter, but he also placed enormous emphasis on environment.
Poor living conditions, inadequate education, instability, poverty, social exclusion, and limited opportunities could reinforce one another across generations.
In other words, Dugdale did not simply argue that people were born destined for crime.
He believed circumstances helped create and perpetuate destructive patterns.
He also believed changing those circumstances could change outcomes.
Later historical scholarship has repeatedly emphasized this point. Dugdale was far less deterministic than many of the writers who later used his work.
That difference became especially important as the United States entered the age of eugenics.
How the Jukes became a symbol of “bad heredity”
By the early twentieth century, eugenics had become increasingly influential in American academic and political circles.
Its advocates believed that traits such as intelligence, poverty, disability, mental illness, and criminal behavior could often be explained primarily through heredity.
Some went much further, arguing that society should prevent certain people from reproducing.
The Jukes story fitted that worldview almost perfectly.
A family tree could be drawn.
Crime could be marked on it.
Poverty could be marked on it.
Institutionalization, illness, and prostitution could be marked on it.
Once placed on a genealogy chart, social problems could be made to look like inherited biological defects.
In 1915, researcher Arthur H. Estabrook revisited the Jukes genealogy and greatly expanded it. His work placed much stronger emphasis on hereditary explanations than Dugdale had.
Over time, the Jukes were turned into one of the best-known examples used in eugenic literature.
The problem was fundamental.
Poverty was often treated as though it were a biological trait.
So were criminality, dependence on public assistance, and social marginalization.
Yet generations of people living in the same disadvantaged environments may share similar outcomes for reasons that have little to do with inherited “degeneracy.”
Lack of education can reproduce itself.
Poverty can reproduce itself.
Violence can reproduce itself.
Exclusion can reproduce itself.
None of those processes requires a simple genetic explanation.
Then came Jonathan Edwards
In 1900, educator Albert Edward Winship published Jukes-Edwards: A Study in Education and Heredity.
The title reveals the entire premise.
Winship wanted a contrast.
He chose the family of Jonathan Edwards.
Edwards, born in 1703, was a theologian, preacher, philosopher, and one of the most influential intellectual figures of colonial America. He later became president of the College of New Jersey, which would eventually become Princeton University.
He and his wife, Sarah Pierpont, had 11 children.
Their descendants became unusually well documented, partly because many entered highly visible professions.
Winship found ministers, university graduates, lawyers, physicians, professors, public officials, and other prominent figures throughout the extended family.
To him, the Edwards family seemed to provide the perfect counterpoint to the Jukes.
Where one lineage appeared associated with poverty and crime, the other appeared associated with education and achievement.
The comparison became irresistible.
The Edwards numbers sound extraordinary
Later summaries of the Edwards family often describe large numbers of college graduates, professors, doctors, lawyers, politicians, clergy members, and government officials.
One especially famous relative was Aaron Burr, the third vice president of the United States, who was Jonathan Edwards’ grandson.
These connections are real.
But turning them into a scientific comparison with the Jukes is a mistake.
Winship had not created a genetic experiment.
He had created a social and educational comparison.
The Edwards family came from a highly educated, connected, and relatively privileged environment.
Education was valued.
Institutional access was available.
Religious and academic networks were strong.
Children grew up surrounded by adults for whom literacy, learning, and public service were normal parts of life.
That makes the later success of many descendants interesting.
It does not prove that their accomplishments were genetically inherited from Jonathan Edwards.
The two families were never comparable groups
Imagine two large populations.
Children in the first grow up with limited schooling, little financial security, unstable housing, few professional contacts, and repeated exposure to the criminal justice system.
Children in the second grow up surrounded by educated adults, academic institutions, strong professional networks, books, money, and social connections.
Several generations later, the second population has more doctors, lawyers, professors, and political leaders.
What caused the difference?
You cannot answer that question from the family trees alone.
Perhaps some inherited traits played a role.
But so could education.
Money.
Nutrition.
Health care.
Social status.
Connections.
Neighborhoods.
Marriage patterns.
Access to universities.
Different standards of record keeping.
Different opportunities.
The Jukes–Edwards comparison cannot separate those factors.
That is why it should never be described as a scientific experiment.
It was a historical comparison between two very different social worlds.
History also recorded the two families differently
There is another bias hidden inside the story.
Successful people tend to leave detailed records.
A nineteenth-century physician might appear in professional directories, newspaper reports, institutional archives, university records, and biographies.
A professor might publish books.
A politician might appear in government documents.
A clergyman might leave sermons, correspondence, and church records.
Poor people often left far fewer traces.
A laborer without property, a woman living in poverty, or a child in a remote community might disappear almost completely from the historical record.
But if that same person was arrested, imprisoned, institutionalized, or placed on public assistance, suddenly there was documentation.
That creates a powerful distortion.
Among privileged families, historians are more likely to see achievements.
Among marginalized populations, records may disproportionately preserve encounters with institutions, poverty, illness, or crime.
Centuries later, those very different records can be mistaken for an objective comparison of two families.
What modern science says about antisocial behavior
Modern genetics does not support either extreme.
It does not tell us that biology is irrelevant.
But it also does not support the idea that someone inherits a simple “criminal gene.”
Research involving twins, adoptees, and families suggests that some individual differences associated with antisocial behavior have heritable components.
Traits such as impulsivity, emotional regulation, sensitivity to stress, aggression, or risk-taking can be influenced partly by genetics.
But genes operate within environments.
Childhood experiences matter.
Parenting matters.
Education matters.
Economic security matters.
Peer groups matter.
Trauma matters.
Neighborhood conditions matter.
Access to treatment and social support matters.
Modern researchers therefore focus heavily on interactions between biology and environment rather than trying to reduce human behavior to one or the other.
Even the concept of heritability is often misunderstood.
A heritability estimate describes variation within a particular population under particular environmental conditions.
It does not predict the future of an individual child.
It is not destiny.
Childhood conditions can echo across generations
There is, however, one part of the old Jukes story that modern research helps us understand more clearly.
Conditions experienced during childhood can have consequences that last for decades.
Research on adverse childhood experiences has linked severe or prolonged childhood stress with later differences in physical health, mental health, education, employment, and social outcomes.
Likewise, poverty is not merely a temporary shortage of money.
It can shape housing, nutrition, schooling, neighborhood safety, medical access, stress levels, and future employment.
When those disadvantages accumulate, they can affect not only one child but the opportunities available to the next generation as well.
The reverse can also happen.
Educational opportunities, financial stability, strong social networks, and supportive family environments can create advantages that accumulate across generations.
So yes, families can develop patterns that last for a very long time.
But that is very different from saying that one morally “bad” ancestor creates generations of bad descendants.
Can one parent really influence five generations?
In some ways, yes.
A parent can pass down much more than DNA.
They can pass down money.
Property.
Education.
Expectations.
Connections.
Coping strategies.
Traditions.
Trauma.
Parenting habits.
Attitudes toward school.
Ways of dealing with conflict.
A child raised in a stable environment may later create a similarly stable environment for their own children.
A child raised amid instability may carry some of those difficulties into adulthood.
But neither process is automatic.
People change.
Families change.
Circumstances change.
Children sometimes reject the patterns they grew up with.
New relationships, education, therapy, opportunity, community support, or simple chance can alter a family trajectory dramatically.
Influence can cross generations.
Destiny cannot be read from a family tree.
The real lesson of the Jukes story is almost the opposite of the viral one
The simplified version goes something like this:
Max Jukes was a bad man, so his descendants became criminals.
Jonathan Edwards was a good man, so his descendants became successful.
The historical record does not support such a clean moral equation.
Jukes was a pseudonym.
The people studied were not simply the descendants of one patriarch.
The original investigation used nineteenth-century methods.
Dugdale believed environment mattered enormously.
Later eugenicists reshaped the story into a much stronger argument about heredity than the original evidence justified.
And the Edwards comparison involved a family with radically different social, educational, and economic advantages.
Yet there is still a reason this story has survived for nearly 150 years.
Something we do today can echo far beyond our own lifetime.
But what families pass down is not only DNA.
They also pass down opportunities, habits, expectations, resources, wounds, relationships, and ways of understanding the world.
That may be the most important lesson hidden inside the Jukes–Edwards story.
The past can influence a family’s future.
It does not have to decide it.