Wilkinson, Warring, 1834-1918.

Biography

Warring Wilkinson, educator and head of the California Institution for the Deaf and the Blind at Berkeley, California, for over 40 years, was born in Charlton, New York, May 25, 1834, and educated at Union College. He began his educational work with the deaf in 1858, after graduation, at the New York Institution for the Deaf. In 1865 he accepted the offer as principal of the California School for the Deaf and the Blind, a private institution founded in San Francisco in 1860 by Mrs. Frances Augusta Clark. He soon succeeded in securing state support for the school and then, also, a new location. Berkeley was chosen as the site, and in 1869 the school was moved across the Bay, where it became one of the best known in the country. In 1909, his eye sight failing, he retired, and the Board of Directors made him Principal Emeritus. He died on April 7, 1918.

From the guide to the Warring Wilkinson Papers, [ca. 1875-1911], (The Bancroft Library)