Mrs. Sigourney of Hartford: Poems and Prose on the Early American Deaf Community

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments We are most grateful to Harlan Lane, who generously gave us a complete copy of the notes and sources on Lydia Sigourney that he had gathered over the years, beginning with his earliest work toward When the Mind Hears, but which had never found their way into any of his publications. Thanks, Harlan! Gary Wait, Archivist at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, likewise generously shared with us information he had gathered on Sigourney and on Julia Brace but had not (yet) used in the preparation of any publication . Gary also has promptly and cheerfully answered odd questions from us over many years. Judy Yaeger Jones kindly provided information about Sigourney’s correspondence with Laura Redden. The following Connecticut libraries were most helpful and very kind to us, two Deaf women from Washington, D.C., who must have appeared rather stunned by the wealth of archival material to be seen seemingly everywhere, just for the asking: the Stowe-Day Library at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, which holds a surprisingly large selection of editions of various Sigourney books not readily available elsewhere; the Connecticut Historical Society, which most kindly let us in to work on a day when they had planned to be closed for renovations; the Hartford Public Library, where we were able to sample the Hartford Courant’s stories on the new Asylum and the doings of Dr. Cogswell, Mrs. Sigourney, and just about everyone connected with the early years of the Asylum; the Watkinson Library and College Archives of Trinity College, Hartford, which holds some unexpected material on Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet’s life outside of the Asylum; and finally , at Yale, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, the Sterling Memorial Library’s Manuscripts and Archives collection, and the Medical History Library, which hold, respectively, many rare editions of Sigourney’s books, the Cogswell Family Papers, and material relating to Dr. Cogswell’s medical career. We thank the Gallaudet Research Institute for travel grants that made research at ix Sigourney FM Pgs i-x.indd 9 4/4/2013 12:34:56 PM x Acknowledgments these libraries possible, and Don Reid of Butternut Farm, Glastonbury , for his hospitality and geese eggs. In Maryland and Washington , D.C., the Gallaudet University Library Deaf Collections and Archives, the Johns Hopkins University Milton S. Eisenhower Library, and the University of Maryland’s Maryland Room at the Hornbake Library North all very kindly assisted our research, the last even opening up an exhibit case to remove a book so that we could consult it on the spot. Many thanks to Susannah Macready for reading a draft of the introduction and suggesting improvements. Sigourney FM Pgs i-x.indd 10 4/4/2013 12:34:56 PM ...