Profile portrait of Emile Pierre Trencheri, Teacher in the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind [now Perkins School for the Blind] From the Boston Transcript, Wednesday, August 17, 1904: Emile Pierre Trencheri, aged 91, died in Alton, Ill., yesterday. He founded the first school for the blind in America in Boston, 1832, under the suggestion of Dr. Howe and General LaFayette [this is an error]. While a resident of the East he enjoyed the intimate friendships of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Prescott, the historian, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He went to Alton in 1836 and established the first music store in the central West, selling the first piano shipped West of the Mississippi River. He was a talented musician and for a number of years was an organist in the Catholic Cathedral. During the last few years of his life he was blind, but continued tuning pianos until 1 year ago.
