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A SHORT HISTORY OF
Previous, however, to the adoption of the Constitution, the State had taken steps to establish such institutions. As early as February, 1848, at the suggestion of the Governor, Epaphroditus Ransom, the Legislature passed an act establishing the "Michigan Asylum for Educating the Deaf and Dumb and Blind." In 1850, the village, now city, of Flint, whose citizens had agreed to contribute $3,000 in money and twenty acres of land for the benefit of the Institution, was chosen as its future location. In 1853, 3,000 were appropriated for the construction of buildings and other purposes. Two members of the Board of Trustees were deputed to visit schools for the deaf and the blind in other States, with a view of obtaining information which should guide them in the erection of buildings. As a result of this visit the Board wisely decided not to defer the establishment of the Institution until permanent buildings should have been erected. As a result of this visit the Board wisely decided not to defer the establishment of the Institution until permanent buildings should have been erected, but to hire a house and open a school as soon as possible. In their visit to the other states in search of information the Trustees had been favorably impressed with the Rev. Barnabas Maynard Fay, an instructor in the Indiana Institution for the Blind, and when they decided to open the school they invited him to become principal. He accepted the invitation of the Trustees; a suitable house was rented, and notice was given that the school would be open for the reception of pupils on the 1st of February, 1854. On the 6th of February the first pupil came; he was James Bradley, who for many years has been a prosperous farmer at Lawton, Michigan, but is now residing near Flint, and was present at our Alumni reunion in June, 1898. By the close of the year there were seventeen deaf pupils in attendance. In September, 1864, Mr. Fay resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. E. L. Bangs, and he in 1876 by Mr. J. W. Parker, who resigned in 1879, when Thomas MacIntyre, who had been for twenty-six years Principal of the Indiana Institution, succeeded him. In 1880, the blind pupils, who had been in the school, were removed to Lansing. In June, 1882, Mr. D. H. Church was appointed Superintendent, and Mr. F. A. Platt, Principal, an arrangement which lasted only one year, the office of the Principal being abolished in 1883, and Mr. M. T. Gass elected Superintendent, an office which he held till July, 1892, when Mr. Thomas Monroe succeeded him. The following September Mr. Monroe was stricken with typhoid fever, and died on the 30th of that month. On his death the present Superintendent, Francis D. Clarke, who had received a training of seventeen years under Dr. I. L. Peet, of New York School, and who was at that time at the head of the Arkansas State School, was elected. We have seen that the school closed its first year with 17 pupils. In 1865 there were 94; under the administration of Mr. Bangs, this number grew to 212. In 1883 there were 271, and in 1893 there were 294. Since then the school has grown rapidly, the number present for the past few years being as many as the buildings would accommodate. There are now actually present 415. The number of deaf children of school age in the State is about 1,100.
Of these, nearly five hundred are now growing up without any education whatever, but we are in touch with the majority of the parents of these and hope to have many of them in school before long.
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