Sigourney, Lydia Huntley

Hearing. Grew up in Norwich, CT, daughter of a gardener. Her father's widowed employer took an interest in her and paid for her schooling, first in a Hartford, CT public school and then in a private girls' school, where her aptitude for writing became apparent. Worked for 2 years as a teacher in a Norwich school and then 5 more as headmistress of a private Hartford girls' school. It was at this Hartford private school in 1814 that she found a deaf girl, Alice Cogswell (q.v.), in her class and made the first attempts to teach Alice, before Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (q.v.) took over that cause. Lydia gave up education when she married banker and merchant Charles Sigourney. Though at first her husband discouraged her writing, she persevered and published the first of several books in 1815, continuing to write and publish until at least the 1850s. Died and buried at Hartford. A pamphlet biography of her is Lydia Sigourney: Philanthropist (1993).