Mason Fitch Cogswell

Mason Fitch Cogswell (1761–1830) was an American medical doctor who pioneered education for the deaf. Cogwell's daughter, Alice Cogswell, was deaf after the age of two, prompting Cogswell to jointly establish the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

Biography Cogswell was born on 28 September 1761 in Canterbury, Connecticut, the third son of the Reverend James Cogswell and Alice Fitch. His mother died when he was 11 years old; after this his father moved to New Scotland Parish in Windham and later remarried. Cogswell was left in the care of Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress and governor of Connecticut. Cogswell matriculated and graduated as valedictorian from Yale in 1780. At Yale, he was a member of the debating society, Brothers in Unity. He studied medicine with his brother James at the soldiers' hospital in New York City during the American Revolution, and eventually became one of the best known surgeons in the country. He was one of the first in the United States to remove a cataract from the eye, and the first American to tie the carotid artery (1803). Cogswell was close to the Hartford Wits, a group of young writers from Connecticut. He died of pneumonia in 1830 in Hartford.

With their return, Cogswell assisted in the founding of the first permanent school for the deaf in North America – the American School for the Deaf – in Hartford, Connecticut, in which his daughter was the first pupil.