Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet

He was the eldest of 13 children, and what standing the family had came from his father, Peter Wallace Gallaudet, who had worked as a personal secretary to George Washington. The son took a Yale bachelor's degree in 1805, at 17 and with the highest honors, added a master's in 1808, and then could not settle to anything. He tried law. He tried trade. He finished a two-year course at Andover Theological Seminary in 1814. Pulpits were offered him and he turned them down, saying his health would not stand the work, and went home to Hartford to recover. On May 25, 1814, he watched a neighbor's nine-year-old daughter playing off by herself, apart from the other children, and picked up a stick.

The girl was Alice Cogswell, and her father, the physician Mason Fitch Cogswell, raised the money to send Gallaudet to Europe for a method. Britain was a closed shop: the Braidwood family, who ran the oral schools in Scotland, would not part with what they knew. In London he met the Abbé Sicard, head of the Paris institution for deaf students, travelling with two of his deaf faculty, Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu. Sicard invited him to Paris, where he learned to sign. He came home with Clerc, who agreed to emigrate, and the two of them toured New England raising public and private funds. On April 15, 1817, the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opened at Hartford with Gallaudet as principal. Alice was one of the first seven pupils.

Sophia Fowler came to the school in 1817, deaf from birth, 19 years old and getting her first education of any kind. She became engaged to the principal and married him on August 29, 1821. They had eight children. Gallaudet was not a linguist or a rights campaigner by conviction so much as a man who had failed to become a minister and found a congregation anyway. He described the school to a friend as his mission field and put the saving of souls at the head of everything he was doing in it. He resigned the directorship in 1830 and never ran the place again. That December, Alice Cogswell died at 25, thirteen days after her father. Gallaudet spent his last two decades writing schoolbooks, teaching in Hartford, and serving as chaplain to the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane.

Western Reserve College sent him an honorary doctorate days before he died at Hartford on September 10, 1851, aged 63. He lies in Cedar Hill Cemetery. Sophia outlived him by 26 years and became the first matron of the college their youngest son, Edward Miner, founded in Washington in 1864 and ran for 46 years. It took the family name in 1894. The method he carried back from Paris fared worse than the institution. At Milan in September 1880 an international congress declared speech superior and voted to bar sign language from classrooms, and schools on both continents complied into the late 1960s. The congress apologized at Vancouver in 2010 and renounced the 1880 resolutions outright in 2025.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet's life against the full span of the corpus.

• American School for the Deaf company
  Opened as the Connecticut Asylum, the first permanent school of its kind in North America 1817
• An Elementary Book for the Use of the Deaf and Dumb in the Connecticut Asylum book
  Printed at Hartford in the school's first year 1817
• Plan of a Seminary for the Education of Instructers of Youth book
  An argument for training teachers as a profession 1825
• An Address on Female Education speech
  Delivered November 21, 1827 1827
• A Statement with Regard to the Moorish Prince, Abduhl Rahhahman book
  Published in New York by D. Fanshaw 1828
• The Mother's Primer, To Teach Her Child Its Letters, And How To Read book
  One of the schoolbooks of his second career 1836

• 1805 aged ~18 Takes a Yale bachelor's degree at 17, with the highest honors A master's followed in 1808. He then tried law, then trade, then divinity.
• May 25, 1814 aged 26 Meets Alice Cogswell and teaches her by drawing in the dirt She was nine and deaf. Her father, Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell, asked him to keep going through the summer.
• 1815 aged ~28 Sails for Britain to learn a method and is refused The Braidwood schools in Scotland would not share their oral technique.
• 1816 aged ~29 Studies in Paris under Sicard and persuades Laurent Clerc to emigrate He learned sign language from Clerc and Jean Massieu, both deaf graduates of the school.
• April 15, 1817 aged 29 The school opens at Hartford with seven pupils Alice Cogswell was one of them. So was Sophia Fowler, aged 19.
• August 29, 1821 aged 33 Marries Sophia Fowler, his former student They had eight children, including Edward Miner Gallaudet.
• December 30, 1830 aged 43 Alice Cogswell dies at 25, thirteen days after her father Gallaudet had resigned the directorship of the school that same year.
• 1838 aged ~51 Becomes chaplain to the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane He also taught in Hartford, where the painter Frederic Edwin Church was a pupil.
• September 10, 1851 aged 63 Dies at Hartford Western Reserve College had sent an honorary doctorate days earlier.

• Alexander Graham Bell 1847–1922
  Inventor of the telephone and founder of AT&T, transforming global communication. opposed by his method's enemy
• Helen Keller 1880–1968
  Deafblind author and lecturer who became the leading American advocate for blind and disabled people. heir to the argument
• Horace Mann 1796–1859
  Reformist who championed public education and is considered the father of the American public school system. corresponded with
• Dorothea Dix 1802–1887
  Social reformer who championed humane treatment of the mentally ill and established asylums nationwide. parallel asylum reformer
• Noah Webster 1758–1843
  Lexicographer whose spellers and American dictionary standardized United States spelling and schoolroom instruction. fellow Connecticut schoolbook writer