Our Peculiar Family: The Massachusetts Schools for Idiotic Children, 1848-1900

In 1848, the first American institutions for children with intellectual disability opened in Massachusetts. The state school in Boston was the project of prominent reformers; the private school in Barre was founded by an entrepreneurial physician. Despite their differences, the trajectories of both schools were grounded in the state's social and political climate. This project explores the schools, their staff and pupils, from their antebellum origins up to the Eugenics movement.