The Bobbitt Family In America

295


  

Nancy Jane (Edwards) Bobbitt (1824-1890). The couple were married in Pulaski County Kentucky July 30, 1844. They reared a large family. James Bobbitt died in Petis County, Missouri. Nancy Jane Bobbitt died in Benton County, Missouri.

One of the most outstanding members of the Bobbitt family was Dr. Joseph Mathew Bobbitt, a Behavioral Scientist. He was a grandson of James Washington and Nancy Jane Bobbitt. Dr. Bobbitt was a behavioral psychologist with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.

In 1966 Dr. Bobbitt was named executive director of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children. Three years later the commission made a series of recommendations to Congress that have been influential since in guiding health workers and planners.

Joseph Mathew Bobbitt was born in 1909 in St. Joseph Missouri. He studied, at the University of Southern California and Northwestern University. He taught at Michigan State College, now a University. He was a psychologist at the Coast Guard Academy in World War II and then worked at the National Institute of Mental Health.

In 1967 he received the Harold M. Hildreth public service award of the American Pyschological Association. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

Dr. Bobbitt died on Thursday, July 24, 1975 at the age of 66. He was survived by his wife Katherine (Long) Bobbitt, one sister, Hazel Anderson, and a son Philip Bobbitt of Bethesda, Maryland.

There is a Joseph M. Bobbitt graduate fellowship fund, in the department of human development and family studies at Cornell University, Ithica, New York.