Gallery of Diplomas - Grover Cleveland

The following are diplomas granted to Gallaudet University graduate and undergraduate students and signed by United States President Grover Cleveland who was president from 1885 until 1889 and then again from 1893 until 1897.

President Cleveland attended the Presentation Day (Commencement) exercises on May 6 1885.

Diplomas were also signed by Gallaudet President Edward Miner Gallaudet, president of the institution since its founding in 1864 until 1910.

During this period, the school was known as the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb which included primary and college programs. The primary department was named Kendall School in 1885 in honor of the founder Amos Kendall.

In 1887, six women were admitted to the college on an experimental basis. The admission of women became permanent in 1888. In 1893 Agatha Tiegel became the first woman to receive a bachelor of arts degree.

In 1894, the college program, known as the National Deaf-Mute College, was renamed Gallaudet College in honor of the father of the institution's president, Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who, in 1817, was one of the founders of the American School for the Deaf in Connecticut, the first school for the deaf in the United States.