Gallaudet, TH
NAME:
Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Established free education for the deaf in the United States
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
10 December 1787, Philadelphia, PA
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:10 September 1851, Hartford,
CT. Aged 64
DISCIPLINE:
Educator
FIELD:
Education for the deaf
PARENTS:
Father: Peter W Gallaudet
Mother: Jane Hopkins
SIBLINGS:
?
SPOUSE:
Sophia Fowler
CHILDREN:
8
EDUCATION:
Yale University
Andover Theological Seminary
MAJOR WORK:
"Plan of a Seminary for the Education of Instructers of Youth" (1825)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Gallaudet was descended from a Protestant French family who fled France during a time of persecution in the seventeenth century. He planned to make a career in the church but his health was not robust and after graduating from his theological college he returned to Connecticut where his parents lived.
Next door to his parents lived the Cogswell’s, who had a daughter named Alice who had become deaf after a bout of fever. There was no provision for educating the deaf at that time and Gallaudet undertook to teach Alice himself. Alice's father, Mason Cogswell was a leading New England physician who learned of methods used in Britain and France to educate the deaf when he read a book written by <influenced by> Sicard*.
Gallaudet had managed to teach Alice a few words, but he and Cogswell both realised that Alice needed the sort of professional education which was not available in America. Inspired by Sicard's book, Cogswell and his friends raised funds for a study the methods of teaching the deaf in Europe. They asked Gallaudet to undertake this task and rather reluctantly, due to his poor health and lack of confidence, he agreed and left America in 1815.
He went first to Britain where deaf education was virtually dictated by the Braidwood family. They used an oral method which they kept within the family so that no one else could profit by it. Gallaudet was on the point of returning to the United States when he met the Sicard in London.
Sicard had been head of the French Royal Institute for the Deaf in Paris and he invited Gallaudet to study and observe the sign language method used there which had been introduced by <observed method of> L'Epee*.
In 1816 Gallaudet returned to Hartford accompanied by Laurent Clerc, a young French man who was himself deaf and who had been educated at the Institute and stayed on to work there. Cogswell and his friends helped Gallaudet to establish the Connecticut Asylum for the Education andInstruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, which opened in 1817.
The asylum, later renamed the American School for the Deaf, was the first free education provided for the deaf in the United States. Gallaudet was appointed principal and Clerc assisted him. Gallaudet remained as principal for the next thirteen years. In 1821 he married a former pupil, Sophia Fowler.
Gallaudet used the sign language taught by the French and he provided training for teachers who went on to open more schools using sign language throughout America. Gallaudet also concerned himself in educational and social reforms outside the asylum, including the establishment of teacher training colleges in Connecticut, opening the teaching profession to women, and providing improved education for African-Americans. He resigned as principal in 1830 but continued to work for education reform and to write on education.
His eldest son, Thomas Gallaudet founded St Ann's Episcopal Church for the deaf in New York, while the youngest son, <son was> Edward Gallaudet*, followed his father into education for the deaf.
ASSESSMENT: Gallaudet established the first free education for the deaf in the United States and was largely responsible for the adoption and spread of sign language for the deaf in America.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Edward Gallaudet, pioneer in teaching the deaf
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Humphrey, H, The Life and Labors of the Rev. T H Gallaudet, Robert Carter & Brothers, New York, 1857
Lane, Harlan, When the Mind Hears, A History of the Deaf, Penguin Books, London, 1984
Dictionary of American Biography