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Pionerd is a daily Minnesota history podcast. Every day, one story drawn from the people, places, and moments that shaped the state we call home. From the Iron Range to the Mississippi headwaters, from the Twin Cities to the small towns most maps forget, Minnesota's history is richer and stranger than most people realize. Join us every day and find out what happened here.
INTRO: Minnesota’s First Deaf School: The 1863 Faribault Trial That Changed Education
In the mid-1850s, before Minnesota was even a state, an influential local family named Howe began organizing in Faribault. They had a deaf daughter and wanted an education for her close to home. Across the nation, a movement that began with the first American deaf school in Connecticut in 1817 was moving westward. By September 9, 1863, that national movement landed on the Minnesota frontier. Downtown Faribault sat at the confluence of the Straight and Cannon Rivers. Three local sawmills whined in the background, cutting lumber for forty new, unpainted buildings. Dust settled over dirt streets while the nation tore itself apart in the Civil War, and Minnesota reeled from the fallout of the U.S.-Dakota War. Outside Major Fowler’s rented commercial building at Front and Main Streets, five children waited in the morning chill. State records indicate there were no public funds for a dedicated schoolhouse. Lawmakers faced a stark moral choice: leave these isolated children without access to language, or invest public resources to unlock human potential during a time of existential crisis.
ACT I: The 1858 Faribault Land Grant and the Five-Year Civil War Freeze
In early 1858, Representative George E. Skinner petitioned the first Minnesota State Legislature to build a dedicated school for deaf children in Faribault. Lawmakers agreed to the request, but they attached a strict condition. The citizens of Faribault had to donate forty acres of land within two miles of town to secure the site. Local residents rallied quickly and deeded a pristine forty-acre parcel roughly one mile west of the settlement.
Then the momentum vanished. National conflict erupted into the Civil War, while localized warfare swept across the Dakota border. For five years, the donated land sat entirely empty. State records indicate that no construction took place, and no public funds arrived.
The stalemate broke in January 1863. Faribault Senator John M. Berry introduced a targeted bill to finally launch the stagnant school. The legislature authorized a modest $1,500 emergency appropriation to care for deaf wards of the state. The state appointed three commissioners, Charles Batcheler, David Frost, and attorney Rodney A. Mott. Over time, the massive responsibility fell squarely onto Mott, who stepped up as the sole active leader to turn the law into reality.
Mott knew he needed experienced leadership. He traveled directly to Columbus, Ohio, and recruited Roswell H. Kinney, a veteran teacher at the Ohio School for the Deaf. Kinney accepted the post as the first superintendent.
Back in Faribault, Mott faced another wall. $1,500 could not construct a permanent facility on the donated acreage. Mott adapted. He leased Major Fowler’s commercial building at the corner of Front and Main Streets, now Central Avenue and Division Street, for $150 a year. The storefront sat right across from today’s Buckham Library site. The physical stage was set.
ACT II: Opening Day in 1863: Inside Minnesota’s First Deaf Classroom
Inside Major Fowler’s rented building, Superintendent Roswell H. Kinney scrambled to build a functioning school from scratch. The ground floor had hosted commercial goods and family living quarters. Now, workers dragged in wooden desks, mounted slate chalkboards, and arranged basic living supplies. There were no custom-built classrooms. State funding remained razor-thin, leaving no room for luxury.
Under state law, tuition and residential care were completely free, but families had to provide suitable clothing and pay for their children's travel to Faribault. Kinney adapted standard teaching materials for visual instruction. Incoming students had lived isolated lives across rural Minnesota, cut off from formal language and peer interaction.
On Wednesday, September 9, 1863, the Minnesota School for the Deaf officially opened its doors. Exactly five pioneer students walked into the storefront classroom on that first morning. Over the course of that first academic year, total enrollment grew to eight students.
Kinney instituted the "Combined System" of manual instruction from day one. He used sign language, fingerspelling, object lessons, and written English to establish a rich bilingual foundation. The trial succeeded immediately.
In 1864, state legislators granted the institution permanent status, officially renaming it the Minnesota Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind. Two years later, Harriet Tucker advocated for visually impaired children across the state. Her determination led to the opening of the Blind Department in 1866, welcoming four initial students into the fold. What started as an emergency storefront experiment was fast becoming a permanent beacon of civic inclusion.
ACT III: Moving to The Hill: Campus Expansion, Program Splits, and the Fight Against Stigma
Dr. Jonathan Lovejoy Noyes took over as superintendent in 1866, beginning a monumental thirty-year tenure that established the academy as a national leader. By 1868, the school outgrew its rented downtown quarters and moved up to "The Hill" overlooking the Straight River valley. Students moved into Mott Hall, a majestic permanent structure built from local native limestone.
As enrollment surged on the Faribault bluffs, the shared campus began to strain under its own growth. Administrators realized that deaf, blind, and intellectually disabled students required distinct educational spaces.
In 1873, the state legislature appropriated funds to separate the programs. School officials purchased 97 acres of Alexander Faribault’s estate for $8,500. By the fall of 1874, visually impaired students moved into their own dedicated campus down the road.
Five years later, in 1879, the board created an experimental department for feeble-minded children. Fifteen youth were transferred from state hospitals in Rochester and St. Peter into a rented frame building known as Fairview House. Under Superintendent Arthur C. Rogers, this third branch expanded rapidly into the Faribault State School and Hospital. Over the coming decades, institutional policies shifted away from instruction toward lifelong custodial care and controversial eugenic practices.
Deaf students and alumni resisted these rising institutional stigmas. Led by activists like Olof Hanson, graduates campaigned nationally to strip the demeaning word "Asylum" from state school titles. They organized alumni associations and insisted on their full capability as self-supporting, educated citizens. They proved that visual language was not a defect to be cured, but a vibrant community culture worth defending.
ACT IV: Defending Sign Language: Pioneer Graduates and Minnesota’s National Deaf Leadership
Across America, a dark shift was taking root. Following the 1880 Milan Conference, mainstream educators banned sign language and fired deaf teachers in favor of strict oral speech training. Minnesota quietly stood its ground. Campus leaders protected American Sign Language, maintaining a bilingual haven where students could freely communicate.
In 1883, a young Black girl named Blanche Wilkins enrolled at the Faribault campus. Ten years later, she became the school's first Black deaf graduate, earning acclaim as a master signer and brilliant student. Historical records show Wilkins repeatedly applied to Gallaudet College, the premier national college for deaf students, but the institution rejected her based on her race. Undeterred, she took her talents south to become a pioneering Black Deaf educator in North Carolina and Texas.
Other graduates also reshaped the nation. Olof Hanson, class of 1881, roomed at Gallaudet with renowned deaf artist Cadwallader Washburn before becoming America’s first deaf professional architect. Hanson returned to Faribault to teach and design prominent buildings across the country. Gallaudet’s first female four-year graduate, Agatha Tiegel Hanson, taught at the school for six years in the 1890s.
Superintendent James N. Tate guided the academy from 1898 to 1923, introducing student military drills and vocational trades, including tailor shops, print shops, bakeries, and cabinet shops. Students also competed in athletics as the proud "Hilltoppers". By 1904, official records show Minnesota sent more students to Gallaudet College than any other state in the country.
CONCLUSION: 160 Years of Language and Culture: The Enduring Legacy of MSAD
Today, the rented storefront at Front and Main is long gone, but the institution it birthed stands as a testament to human potential. Operating as Public School District 160, the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf serves students statewide from birth through age twenty-two. On its historic forty-seven-acre Faribault campus, native limestone landmarks built in the nineteenth century stand alongside modern classrooms. Students walk down Olof Hanson Drive. They live in Wilkins Hall, constructed in 2018 to honor pioneer graduate Blanche Wilkins Williams.
Before September 1863, a deaf child in Minnesota lived in total linguistic isolation, cut off from peers, higher education, and public life. That $1,500 emergency investment made during the darkest days of the Civil War did far more than build a school. It unlocked human agency. It proved that when a society invests in accessibility and language, it creates opportunities where none existed before, turning isolated children into national architects, teachers, artists, and leaders whose legacies still shape our world today.