She was educated at the Perkins Institution for the Blind where, under the direction of Samuel Gridley Howe, she learned to read and communicate using Braille and the manual alphabet developed by Charles-Michel de l'Épée.

Her fame was short-lived, however, and she spent the remainder of her life in relative obscurity, most of it at the Perkins Institute, where she passed her time sewing and reading books in Braille.

[6] Her closest friend was a kind, mentally impaired hired man of the Bridgmans, Asa Tenney, whom she credited with making her childhood happy.

[7] In 1837, James Barrett of Dartmouth College saw Bridgman and mentioned her case to Dr. Reuben Mussey, the head of the medical department.

Mussey visited the Bridgman home and found Laura an affectionate and intelligent girl who, despite her severe disabilities, could perform basic household tasks such as sewing and setting the table.

[8] Mussey sent an account to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, who was eager to educate the young Bridgman.

[10][11] Bridgman was frightened and homesick at first, but she soon formed an attachment to the house matron, Miss Lydia Hall Drew (1815-1887), who was also her first instructor at the school.

Howe's plan was based on the theories of the French philosopher Denis Diderot, who believed the sense of touch could develop its "own medium of symbolic language.

"[20] In January 1842, Charles Dickens visited the Institution, and afterwards he wrote enthusiastically in his American Notes of Howe's success with Bridgman.

Dickens quotes Howe's account of Bridgman's education:Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong; and when she is sitting at work, or by the side of one of her little friends, she will break off from her task every few moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to behold.

Thousands of people visited her at the Perkins School, "asked for keepsakes, followed her in the newspapers, and read paeans to her in evangelical journals and ladies' magazines".

[31] While Wight cared deeply for Bridgman, she also felt that, because of her "celebrity" status, the girl enjoyed privileges denied to other students.

[36] Howe rightly surmised that Bridgman was "reacting to the many abandonments and losses she had endured,"[37] and he proposed that she pay a visit to her family, with whom she had had little contact in recent years.

[38] Though Bridgman resumed eating, her often obstinate and temperamental behavior persisted; this troubled Wight, who understood that few people would endure such conduct in a grown woman.

[40] Wight was engaged to a Unitarian missionary, George Bond, and following their marriage, the couple planned to travel to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

[50] She occupied herself by writing letters to her mother and a few friends — Bridgman kept in touch with both Mary Swift and Sarah Wight — sewing, reading the Bible in braille, and keeping her room fastidiously clean.

She earned a little spending money, about $100 a year, from selling her crocheted doilies, purses, and embroidered handkerchiefs,[51] but she was primarily dependent upon the school to supply her with room and board.

Bridgman was a skilled textile creator, making intricate lace collars[52] and other trim such as complicated bead work.

"[55] In 1872, several cottages (each under a matron) for the blind girls were added to the Perkins campus, and Bridgman was moved from the larger house of the Institution into one of them.

[56] The death of Howe in 1876 was a great grief to her, but before he died he had made arrangements ensuring her financial security at the school for the rest of her life.

Sullivan learned the manual alphabet at the Perkins Institution which she took back to Helen, along with a doll wearing clothing that Bridgman had sewn herself.