About perkins compiled by

Compiled by

Kenneth A. Stuckey

1998

Penny Saver, May 1981

and Doers and Dreamers, Social Reformers of the Nineteenth Century by Lynn Deur, 1972.
3. Q: What is the height of the Perkins Tower?

A: 180 Ft.

The architectural style of the new buildings, where the limitations of cost have made it possible to express a style in any consistency, is English collegiate Gothic. The great extent of the buildings made it necessary to choose some particular portion which should be treated with more elaboration than the rest. This portion was naturally the main building whose central tower, 180 feet high, has been made the focus of all the architectural refinement. The tower itself is of concrete for the main portion, so treated that is indistinguishable in appearance from the concrete stone used for molded and other finished portions of the tower, buttresses, tracery and pinnacles.

Boston Weekly Transcript, Friday September 20, 1912.

b. What does the window represent?

c. What is the central theme?

d. What do the side lancets or panels represent?

e. What is the meaning of the bottom panels?

f. What year was it put in?

b. Who was the first student?

c. Who was the first deaf-blind student?
A: a. Emile Trencheri and John Pringle. Both men were blind. Emile Trencheri who taught academic subjects was from the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles, Paris. John Pringle taught "mechanical" subjects as chair caning and handicrafts. He was from the school for the blind in Edinburgh, Scotland.

b. Sophia and Abigale Cater Two young sisters from Andover, MA.

c. Laura Bridgman She came in 1837 from Hanover, New Hampshire.
9. Q: a. Who was Blaisdell? What was the full name? When were they born? When did they die? What was their bequest to Perkins?
A: a. A former Perkins student (1844-1864) who remembered as a boy at Perkins often "wished he had money to spend as he wished, and determined that if he able he would make sure that the students of Perkins would have some money to spend at least once a year. He came to Perkins from Phippsburg, Maine on May 27, 1844.
After he graduated from Perkins and later the Perkins workshop for blind adults, he first made a living tuning pianos and teaching music. Later he became a business man, selling or renting pianos and selling sewing machines. He never lost his interest in his school and often made visits. When he died he on November 6, 1901 at the age of 66, he left $10,000 in cash and real estate (much of the later in western lands) to Perkins. His bequest states: "They (the trustees of the estate) are to pay to each pupil of the Perkins Institution for the Blind and Kindergarten connected with the same, the sum of one dollar all or before the twelfth day of February of each year, the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and in commemoration of his freeing the slaves and preserving the Union, and this to be called the "Blaisdell Fund". If the amount warrant it, and the trustees deem it advisable I also direct that they pay II like sum to each of the said on or before the Fourth of July of each year."
"If the trustees consider it best instead of the last payment they may pay to the graduates each year the sum of from tell to fifteen dollars". Since that time the students of Perkins have enjoyed their "Blaisdell Dollars" due to the wise investment by Perkins of Blaisdell's legacy. He is little known to those who visit the Cedar Grove Cemetery, where he was laid to rest but to countless Perkins students his name lives on.
10. Q: a. What is the name of the large hall in the Howe Building?

b. After whom is it named?

She was the wife of Perkins second director, Michael Anagnos and the eldest child of Perkins first director, Samuel Gridley Howe and Julia Ward Howe. Julia married Michael Anagnos (1837-1906) (full name Anagnostopoulos) in 1870. She died in 1886, a year before the Perkins kindergarten was opened by Anagnos. Julia and Michael had no children, although they both loved children.

b. What are the bells names?

a. How long has it been the Beacon Luncheonette?

b. What is the owner's full name?

c. How old is the building?

Bonus marks if you know in which historic building; outside of Boston you can also find the same coat of arms.

Samuel Gridley Howe by Laura E. Richards, 1935.

"Take care of the little blind children" and "Let us, then, be up, and doing with heart for any fate, still achieving, still pursing, learn to labor and to wait."

b. Who wrote them?
A: a. Outside above the living room window of Anagnos Cottage and over the fireplace in Bennett Cottage.

b. Julia Romana Anagnos - "Take care of the Little Blind Children" These were the last words of Julia Romana Anagnos as she lay dying. The Perkins trustees wrote of her soon after her death.
"One who grew up with this school, who gave her energies and her rich resources of mind and character to its advancement and to the welfare of the blind ... From her childhood her sympathies were irresistibly drawn to her father's [Dr. Howe] enterprise; and she became year by year, though not officially, a more and more valuable assistant .... She contributed not only to the instruction, teaching languages, reading choicest literature to classes of pupils, conversing with them, and in a very quickening way, on serious and improving topics, but she was in an important sense the confidential friend of many of the girls, and also of the boys... She did all she could to make their life here happy" That is why Anagnos Cottage is named after Julia not Michael Anagnos.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Let us, then, be up, and doing ... "

It was taken from "A Psalm of Life” 1839. This famous poem. starts:

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.