Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a pioneer in the history of the education of people who are deaf or hard of hearing, died on this day in 1851. Born in Philadelphia in 1787, as a young man, he enrolled in a seminary to serve as a traveling preacher. In that work he met the nine-year-old deaf girl, Alice Cogswell. Her father encouraged Gallaudet to travel to Europe to learn how deaf students were being taught there.
He did so, at one point traveling to the cutting-edge Institut Royal des Sourds-Muets in Paris. That was where he learned how effective sign language could be for communication. He came back to the United States with his mind brimming with ideas and with a business partner, Laurent Clerc, who had been a faculty member at the French institute.
Gallaudet and Clerc raised funds to found the first permanent school for deaf students in the country. It's now known as the American School for the Deaf.
The country's first advanced education institution for the deaf and hard of hearing, Gallaudet University, was named after Thomas years after his death. It was founded in 1864 by Amos Kendall, who later brought Gallaudet's youngest son, Edward, on to run the university.
