Texas School for the Deaf

The trustees rented a fifty-seven-acre tract with a two-room cottage, three log cabins and an old smokehouse made over as a schoolroom; in 1858 the legislature voted $5,000 to buy it. During the Civil War there was no money for salaries, and teachers and students farmed and made clothes from the wool of their own sheep. The school's first monthly, the Texas Mute Ranger, began in 1878. In 1893 it moved from strictly manual instruction to a combined manual and oral system, and by 1923 it was reported the second-largest school for the deaf in the country.

What the plaque says

Texas School for the Deaf In 1856, the Texas Legislature established the Texas Deaf and Dumb Asylum, which became the Texas School for the Deaf (TSD). Gov. Elisha M. Pease appointed a board of trustees, which rented land at this site. By January 1, 1857, the first day of school, no students had arrived, but by summer of that year, 11 students were enrolled, including Emily Lewis, whose account of the school's early history portrays a life of hard work and self-sufficiency under school matron Josephine Snyder. New Yorker Jacob van Nostrand, with 19 years of deaf education, became the school's first superintendent in 1857. In 1875-76, he returned to New York, and Gov. Richard Coke appointed Gen. Henry McCulloch as superintendent. McCulloch's leadership caused the faculty and staff, including then-principal Emily Lewis, to leave. During the tenure of the next superintendent, Col. John Salmon "Rip" Ford, Lewis returned to the staff, where she stayed until her retirement in 1914. In 1887, the state created what became the Texas Blind, Deaf and Orphan School, which served non-white students. From integration of the schools in 1965 until 2002, its campus in east Austin remained part of TSD's facilities. The 20th century brought many changes to the campus facilities, administration and curriculum, including status as an independent school district. Newsletters and yearbooks document an active sports program over the school's long history, and alumni and staff fondly recall the long-standing, twin-towered main buildilng, and the significant leaders who provided support and education to the school's students and families. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• French Legation State Historic Site — 1.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.5 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• Barton Springs Pool — 1.5 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• Texas State Cemetery — 1.6 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• The Austin Statesman — 0.4 mi
• Headquarters of US Army, 5th Military Dist. — 0.6 mi
• Michael Butler and Butler Brick Company — 0.7 mi
• F. Weigl Iron Works — 0.8 mi