Written by Payton James, in collaboration with the 2026 Mansfield Training School Memorial and Museum Research Team.
A 1975 report by Dr. Stephen Berardinelli brought Mansfield Training School’s scattered history into a single, coherent narrative. By recording the institution’s origins, leadership, and shifting philosophies, Dr. Berardinelli preserved a chronicle that might otherwise have disappeared. His work pieces together decades of events into a timeline that serves to aid in the understanding of how the school evolved and the impact it had on the people who lived and worked there.
1858-1900s: One Man and His Home
In 1858, Henry Knight opened the doors of his home in Lakeville, Connecticut, to a small number of students. There was no campus nor dormitories, just a small school operating out of a house. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that this modest beginning would grow into a campus of nearly two thousand residents.
Within two years of opening its doors, the state agreed to help fund fifteen students, offering about $100 per child, with towns and private donors covering the rest — roughly $4,000 per student in today’s dollars. In addition, an 1856 survey asked towns to report their “idiot population”; some of the towns claimed they had none, and many others reported rates far lower than was likely. This early attempt to document intellectual disability was almost certainly inaccurate; it reflects statewide beliefs that were shaped by shame and denial.
Knight wrote his final report to the school’s directors in 1880; he died the same year at the age of 53 with one account stating he had “burned himself out.” One concern that stood out in his final report was what would happen to the girls in his care. Many of them had no home to return to; Knight feared that they would be released with nowhere to go or into mistreatment. Knight’s question — what happens to someone once their “training” ends, when the outside world has made no room for them — would shape this institution for the next hundred years.
1900s-1920s: The Shift From a Cure to Custody
After Henry Knight’s death, his first son, Dr. Robert P. Knight, ran the school for five years, followed by his second son, Dr. George Henry Knight. Dr. George Henry Knight had been involved in its management since 1885, and the school’s mission shifted quickly under its new leadership. A 1908 report by George Knight argues that lifetime custodial care would be the “surest, most humane and most economical” choice. However, once “humane” and “economical” are tied together, it becomes nearly impossible to pull them apart. The school stopped trying to return residents to their communities and began keeping them indefinitely.
The state of Connecticut had made its stance clear a decade earlier. In 1897, a law made marrying someone classified in “defective classes” punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment. Berardinelli himself doubted this law was ever enforceable, and noted that a state task force labeled it an absurdity and recommended it be repealed.
In 1917, a merger between the Connecticut Colony for Epileptics and the Connecticut Training School for the Feebleminded created the institution as it would be known onward, the Mansfield Training School.
The following year brought hardship: a wooden building housing boys, Hillside Hall, burned to the ground. The paradox of this event was notable, as the Lakeville campus’s population had been transferred to Mansfield’s campus due to the fire risks of its old buildings. That same year, the 1918 flu tore through the school, yielding 200 cases and 30 deaths, all handled by one doctor and one nurse.
1920s-1930s: Expansion
Under the new superintendent, Dr. Charles LaMoure, Mansfield Training School’s population exploded. The population had grown from 304 in 1917 to 1,102 in 1941. The campus expanded to include farms, dormitories, and a hospital. Residents did some of this construction themselves; for instance, the boys at the school made the cement blocks used to build a new cow barn in the 1930s.
After the Great Hurricane of 1938, the property was littered with flattened trees. Naturally, the school saw this as an opportunity to set up its own sawmill where the wreckage was turned into lumber for new construction.
1930s: The Ground Is Shifting
Ideas were beginning to shift; by 1930, IQ tests had been restandardized, demonstrating that intellectual disability did not predispose someone to criminal behavior. This undercut years of theories that had been tied to criminal behavior and intellectual disabilities. Additionally, studies were released on people who had left institutions and been returned back into their communities: most of them “adjusted well,” and more than a third of them held their jobs. None of this information fit with the old narrative of what someone with an intellectual disability was capable of. And none of this new information slowed the line for entrance to the school either. The waiting list for admission was still as large as the number of people that were living there.
1940s: War Brings Change
Wartime labor shortages created opportunities that previous decades of reform had not. As workers left to serve the military, Mansfield Training School gave residents the chance to take on jobs. In total, 287 patients were put on Community Placement, which allowed them to leave the institution and work in the community under supervision. The residents’ work challenged assumptions about the capabilities of people with intellectual disabilities.
1950s-1960s: As Advocacy Grows, Population Grows
In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president, and his personal connection to intellectual disability brought the subject into national visibility in a way it had never had before. Kennedy was inspired by the life of his sister Rosemary Kennedy, who was believed to have sustained a brain injury due to oxygen deprivation during birth, resulting in an intellectual disability (Simons; “Rosemary Kennedy”). Rosemary was left permanently disabled at the age of 23 after undergoing a lobotomy (“Rosemary Kennedy”). The plight of Kennedy’s sister gave him a personal understanding of the poor treatment and lack of support available to people with disabilities at the time, and this understanding shaped his approach to policy once in office. In 1963, President Kennedy signed the first major federal legislation addressing intellectual and developmental disabilities. Kennedy laid the foundation for what would later become The Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities). At its core, the goal of the legislation was to “address problems in state-run institutions for people with disabilities” (National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities) — institutions that were a part of the system Rosemary herself might have encountered.
Around the same time that the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act was passed, The Arc (formerly, NARC) gave parents a collective voice. Meanwhile, at UConn, Dr. David Zeaman and Dr. Betty Zeaman conducted a research program on the learning processes of children with moderate intellectual disabilities. By studying how children with intellectual disabilities learn, Zeaman’s research added a scientific dimension to the political institutionalization conversations already underway. Together, legislative, advocacy-driven, and scientific developments fed a growing pressure toward community-based treatment. One might expect that the convergence of more humane approaches would slow the growth of places like Mansfield Training School. It did not. On the contrary, under superintendent Dayton, the population kept climbing up to 1,814 in 1959. Progress and growth were thus happening simultaneously, pulling in opposite directions.
Dr. Berardinelli’s history concludes in the 1960s, capturing a century of change before the institution entered its final decades. Although Mansfield Training School’s story continued, his work preserves the foundations that shaped what was to follow.
Works Cited
Berardinelli, Stephen D. History of the Mansfield Training School, 1917–1963. June 1975. Connecticut Digital Archive, https://ctdigitalarchive.org/node/3749196?search=The%20Mansfielder%20newsletter%20Mansfield%20Training%20School. Accessed 7 Aug. 2026.
National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities. “Major Federal Legislation.” National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, https://nacdd.org/major-federal-legislation/. Accessed 7 Aug. 2026.
Simons, Jo Ann. “Fifty Years Later: JFK’s Lasting Legacy.” Ruderman Family Foundation, 22 Nov. 2013, https://rudermanfoundation.org/fifty-years-later-jfks-lasting-legacy/. Accessed 7 Aug. 2026.
“Rosemary Kennedy: Inspiration and Revelation.” Special Olympics, Special Olympics, 2018, https://www.specialolympics.org/stories/news/rosemary-kennedy-inspiration-and-revelation. Accessed 7 Aug. 2026.