The Whittaker family, known as America’s most inbred family, live in a small shack in the village of Odd, 75 miles from Charleston, West Virginia.
Despite their complicated history with inbreeding leading to severe genetic defects, they are often praised for their grace and joy.
Some members of the family communicate through grunts and barks, but they understand what is being said to them.
The Whittakers are known for being “caring”, “honest” and “pure”, living a simple life with little interest in material possessions.
Photographer Mark Laita has set up a GoFundMe page on behalf of the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly to help the family buy a new home. He wrote on the fundraising page: “Soft White Underbelly is trying to help the Whittaker family of Odd, West Virginia purchase a new home.
“This GoFundMe campaign was created to avoid confusion with the previous campaign which was created in 2022 to help with the Whittaker family’s expenses. $12,000 has already been donated towards the house on that campaign.”
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The Whittaker family’s history of inbreeding began with identical twin brothers, Henry and John.
Their children married each other and had their kids. Harry and his wife Sally had seven children, including John Isom Whittaker, born in 1882. John fell for his first cousin, Ada Rigg, and they had nine children, including Gracie Irene Whittaker in 1920.
Gracie later married her double cousin, John Emory Whittaker, in 1935. They shared both sets of grandparents and had 15 children together. Sadly, many of their children were born with severe physical and mental impairments, believed to be due to inbreeding.
Their eldest child, Aileen, died in June 1997 from a heart attack, while their oldest son Emery died a month after birth in 1938 from pneumonia. Today, Betty, born in 1952, leads the family after promising her mother she wouldn’t marry so she could care for her 14 siblings.
Photographer Mark was invited into their home in Odd and spoke to the family about their daily lives and heritage.
When asked about their parents, Betty didn’t initially reveal if her parents were related but later confirmed her mum and dad are double first cousins.
Ray and Lorene, siblings who communicate through grunts, barks, and movements rather than words, were able to understand the filmmaker’s questions with ease. In a shocking revelation, it was shared that Lorene’s son, Timmy, born in 1979, was the result of sexual abuse.
A family relative revealed: “They understand what you’re talking about. If they don’t like it, they start yelling- they let you know they don’t like that idea.”
Timmy is the only Whittaker family member who finished high school. The family is shielded by their neighbors who are not welcoming to strangers, with one neighbor even threatening photographer Mark when he visited.
In 2020, Mark filmed a documentary about the family’s unique lifestyle, which has been viewed over 40 million times on YouTube. When he returned in 2022, he found that the family had used $55,000 raised from a GoFundMe page to make much-needed home improvements.
On the Koncrete KLIPS podcast, Mark described his visit: “We came around to this road, which turns into a country road, which turns into a dirt road, and we come to this trailer and then a little shack on the other side of the road.
“And there’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions and they are barking at us. And then one guy, you would look at him in the eye or say anything and he would just scream and go running away, and his pants would fall around his ankles, and he would go running off and go and kick a garbage can.”
“And this would happen over and over. It was out of control – the craziest thing I have ever seen.” The Whittaker family agreed to let him inside to take some photos after he offered to take a portrait for them to place in the casket of a loved one who had recently died.
[“They are kind of protected by the neighbors and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them. And everybody in the area kind of knows of them and are like, ‘let’s go over to the Whittakers’ and laugh at them or whatever.'”
An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story.
