V.S.D.B. Student Website

1840

• January 1840: First blind male student, Henry J. Gray was admitted.
• JULY 9 1840: Cornerstone for Main Hall was laid. Robert Cary Long designed Main Hall. Robert Long, a distinguished architect of Baltimore, was employed to visit the site selected and furnish a complete and minute plan of the buildings to be erected. The choice of Mr. Long as an architect was a wise one, for probably no other architect of the day could have been so fortunate in blending entire convenience of arrangement with a high degree of architectural beauty. He completed Main Hall. Unfortunately Mr. Longs life was cut short when he suddenly died of cholera at Morristown, N.J. He was only 39 years old.

1841

• Robert Mallory Foley (first student admitted in this school) died on Sept. 20, 1841. Buried in the Trinity Churchyard of Staunton, VA. The Board of Visitors paid for his burial and tombstone.

1845

• SEPTEMBER 1845: Main Hall was completed. The building sets on top of the hill facing south and surrounded by trees, which in the winter protects from the harsh winds and in the summer shades the walks. It is close to town yet has a country residence. The building is made of brick and stands four stories high. There is a main building with a portico with six Doric order columns with two wings each with piazza ten feet wide for the exercise for the pupils. The basement story contains; the kitchen, servants rooms, other offices for the large establishment, four large and two small dining rooms, a room temporarily used for a printing office, two rooms for bathing and two rooms for washing purposes. All apartments are supplied with cold and warm water. The warm water is supplied by a steam generator in the kitchen and supplies all the steam need for culinary purposes. The first floor has a beautiful furnished parlor and library, two offices (one for the principal of each department), four large schoolroom connected in pairs by folding door, four recitation rooms, and one large exhibition room. The second floor and attic story there are eight dormitories each capable of containing twenty beds, sixteen chambers for containing the officers two large rooms with cases of drawers and wardrobes for the clothing of the pupil and a sewing room, where deaf mute girls make and mend the clothing of pupils. Beside numerous apartments there is in each story a large passage. The building is heated in the winter by three furnaces and is amply provided with ventilators.

1850's

• 1851: Library was set up in Main Hall.
• 1851: Gas lamps replace the lard lamps and candles. Oil and lard lamps were found to be most impractical and unsatisfactory.
• 1852: Boiler House was erected on east side of Main Hall.
• 1852: Rev. Joseph Dennie Tyler, Principal (Superintendent) of Department of the Deaf died January 29, 1852. He was buried in the Trinity Churchyard of Staunton, VA. His death at the early age of 48, after an illness of only two weeks, cast a gloom over the town, according to the reports in the Staunton Spectator of February 4, 1852 (source: Mr. Bass).
• After the death of Joseph D. Tyler, Dr. John Charles Martin Merillat (Supt. Of the blind department) became Principal (Superintendent) of both Departments.
• 1853: Main Hall is restructured. The males occupy the east wing and the females occupy the west wing. The deaf students are on the northern side of the building and the blind students are on the southern side of the building. Basement contained the dining rooms, kitchen, and household apartments. First floor contain schoolrooms, sitting rooms, recitation rooms, and others. Second and third floor are for chambers, clothing rooms, and sick rooms and pupils bedrooms. They are large and airy. They are heated in the winter by warm air.
• 1854: Chapel is erected. (Source: Mr. Bass).
• 1855: Chapel completed.
• OCTOBER 29, 1858: A fire broke out in the bottom rooms of the Chapel and was put out quickly. Some of the old records were lost.
• OCTOBER 18,1858: First vocational building was destroyed by fire. (Source: Mr. Bass).
• 1859: Second vocational building was erected. It was located near the shoe shop on the north side of Swanson Hall.

1860's

• DECEMBER 1860: Virginia seceded from the Union.
• FEBRUARY 1861: Confederate States of America is formed.
• APRIL 12, 1861: Civil War begins.
• JULY 1861: Governor of Virginia issued an order transferring students (78 students) and teachers to the building of the Virginia Female Institute, now Stuart Hall, and surrendering the institution buildings to the Confederate States for a military hospital. Mr. Covell, in the meantime, acting upon authority of the Board, tried to pay the Virginia Female Institute the sum of $3,160 for rent of its building from July 1861 to October, 1863, at the rate of $1,440 per years set by the assessors. This payment was declined by the girls school on the grounds that its building were taken without warrant of law, and were held against its consent, and it was unwilling to do anything which would place it in the position of recognizing the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind as tenants. (Source: Mr. Bass).
• JULY 19, 1861: The troop took possession of the school. (Source: Mr. Bass).
• 1861: The Chapel became the operating room of the hospital. The basement of Main Hall was turned into a morgue.
• 1861: Dr. Jean Merillat becomes a surgeon for the hospital with the approval of the Board of Visitors.
• 1862: Dr. Jean Merillat resigned as principal of VSDB to take up military duties and was succeeded by Major John Collins Covell, his brother-in-law.
• 1862: Major John Collins Covell became second principal of the
school.
• 1863: Virginia split into two states and West Virginia was born. West Virginia came under President Abraham Lincoln (North) and Virginia came under President Jefferson Davis (South).
• 1864: A large lot in the Thornrose Cemetery was purchased for the School.
• SPRING 1864: With 50 pupils the institution was conducted in as favorable a manner as circumstances would permit until the latter part of the spring of 1864 when a serious interruption occurred with the occupation of Staunton by United States troops. (Source: Mr. Bass).
• APRIL 9, 1865: Lee surrenders in Virginia and Civil War is ended.
• MAY 1865: The principal was permitted by the United States officer then in command to return and take possession of such portions of the buildings of the institutions as were no longer needed for hospital purposes. Only a short time elapsed after that before all the movable property belonging to the institution had been transferred to it own premises.
• OCTOBER 1, 1865: The school was again put in operation with the full corps of officer.
• 1867: Steps replaced in front of Main Hall with black walnut wood.
• 1867: In Principal (Superintendent) Covells report: First proposal for a school for black deaf students. I believe the time has arrived when the State should take into consideration the establishing of an institution for the blind and deaf-mute colored people within her border, either at Lynchburg or Richmond.
• 1869: North Carolina becomes the first state to provide an institution for the education of black deaf children. The school is named the Governor Morehead School. There was none for the black children in Virginia.

1870's

• 1870: West Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind was established. Professor H.H. Johnson was instrumental in the establishment of WVSDB. He was blind. He attended VSDB.
• 1870: The school purchased Eastwood adding 5 ½ to 6 acres to the grounds.
• 1871: Principal Covell resigned to go to West Virginia School for the Deaf.
• 1871: Captain Charles D. McCoy became third principal of the school.
• 1874: The Goodson Gazette newspaper was formed. (Source: Mr. Bass). A printing press was acquired and placed in the second (?) vocational building.
• 1875: The Laundry House was erected. (Source: Mr. Bass). It also contained a coal bin.
• 1876: New bell placed on the Chapel porch. It was used to call the pupils to work and ran out the passing hours.
• 1876: New gates were placed at the entrance of the institution. The gates were locked every night.
• 1876: Dining Hall/Infirmary Building and kitchen staff house was erected. (Source: Mr. Bass).
• 1877: New fountains completed new iron railings placed around the pool in the front yard.
• 1877: First fire department at school was organized.
• 1877: The newspaper, Twin Fountains, was organized.
• 1879:
• Principal McCoy died September 11, 1879.
• 1879: Leonidas Poyntz, A.B. became fourth principal of the school.

1880's

• 1880: In Milan, Italy an international conference of deaf educators convened. They passed a resolution banning sign language. This single event greatly impacted the lives of the Deaf. It almost destroyed sign language. Along with Gallaudet College, VSDB resisted and allowed sign language.
• 1880: Captain Thomas Doyle became fifth principal of the school.
• 1882: Dr. William Ryland Vaugh, M.D., A.M. became sixth principal of the school.
• 1883 Charles S. Roller became the seventh principal of the school.
• 1883: The baseball team for the Deaf was organized.
• 1884: The girls calisthenics team for the Deaf was organized.
• 1884: Captain Thomas Doyle (again) became the eighth principal of the school.
• 1884: Several new trees arrived from Pratts nurseries in Rochester New York arrived and were planted in the front ground.
• 1884: New fountain placed just off the drive in front of Main Hall.
• NOVEMBER 13, 1886: New telephones put in position.
• 1887: New mailbox placed in front of school entrance.
• 1888: The Asteroid newspaper was organized.

1890's

• SEPTEMBER 1896:
• A destructive flood, Great Flood hit the city. The school garden was covered by about four feet of water, the water main was broken, the fence lost, and soil and levees washed away. The overall damaged was estimated at $1,500.
• 1896:
The title of principal was changed to superintendent.
• 1896:
William A. Bowles became the ninth superintendent of the school.
• 1898:
The name of the school was changed from The Virginia Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind to The Virginia School for the Education of the Deaf and the Blind.
• 1898:
• The school was placed under the Board of Education.
• 1898:
• The first cooking class began. Miss Mary T. Dowd was the first teacher (1898 to 1901).
• 1898:
Tyler Hall, dorm for blind boys, was erected. It was named after the Virginia governor, James Hugh Tyler (1898- 1902.
• 1899: The name of the school was changed from The Virginia School for the Education of the Deaf and the Blind to The Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind.

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