15 Facts About Joseph DeJarnette

Joseph Spencer DeJarnette was the director of Western State Hospital from 1905 to November 15,1943.

Joseph DeJarnette was a vocal proponent of racial segregation and eugenics, specifically, the compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill.

Joseph DeJarnette was born on his family's plantation, Pine Forest, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia to parents Elliott Hawes DeJarnette, formerly a Captain in the Confederate Army and Evelyn Magruder DeJarnette.

Joseph DeJarnette's maternal grandfather Benjamin Henry Magruder was a prominent Virginia lawyer and legislator, and in 1864, was elected to the US House of Representatives.

Joseph DeJarnette's uncle Daniel Coleman DeJarnette was a prominent Virginia politician who served in the Virginia House of Delegates, United States Congress and the Confederate Congress during the Civil War.

Joseph DeJarnette continued to practice medicine following the marriage and the couple had no children.

In 1906, Joseph DeJarnette worked with Aubrey Strode and Albert Priddy to establish the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in Lynchburg.

Joseph DeJarnette believed that sterilizing people with certain traits that he believed to be hereditary would prevent these traits from being passed on to future generations.

In 1932, Joseph DeJarnette opened a self-supporting, semiprivate mental hospital for middle-income patients, adjacent to Western State which the General Assembly named the Joseph DeJarnette State Sanatorium after him.

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power as Chancellor of Germany and established a zealous eugenics program, Joseph DeJarnette watched with interest and praised Nazi eugenics policy.

Joseph DeJarnette wrote a poem entitled Mendel's Law: A Plea for a Better Race of Men, which he read in public on a number of occasions.

Joseph DeJarnette remained in charge of the semi-private DeJarnette Sanatorium until 1947 and continued to advocate eugenics after the Nazi Holocaust was exposed at the end of World War II.

Joseph DeJarnette died in 1957 and was interred next to his wife, who had predeceased him, in her family cemetery in Bath County, Virginia.

The Joseph DeJarnette Sanatorium, opened in 1932, was named for him.

In 1996, a new complex known as the Joseph DeJarnette Center was constructed.