In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BARRY A. CROUCH n April 15, 1817, the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opened its doors in Hartford , Connecticut. Known today as the American School for the Deaf (ASD), it was the first permanent residential school for deaf students established in the western world. Earlier efforts had been made to educate deaf people, but they were private endeavors, restricted to a select group of deaf children and adults. In contrast, the Connecticut state school, founded as part of the reform movement that pervaded American thinking in the early decades of the nineteenth century, was organized to educate deaf children from all classes of society. There was nothing inevitable about the form that deaf education assumed in the early years of the nineteenth century, although by the 1810s it seemed clear that some kind of school for deaf pupils would exist in the United States. Schools were becoming more popular as many people began to believe that an educated citizenry was a necessary prerequisite to economic growth and a stable democratic government. In the words of David Rothman (1971), American reformers discovered the asylum. But the asylum in the form of a deaf residential school did not take the shape or form that Rothman suggests characterized other social institutions. The records of the American School for the Deaf encompass almost all aspects of deaf history and culture in the early years of our nation. A study of ASD records and the information they contain about deaf people and deaf education in these early years is important for many reasons. The Connecticut school's background and influence, the founders of the institution, and the actual education available there raise important questions about the environment within which education of deaf students in the United States emerged. The records preserved by ASD can assist historians in answering some of these questions. A brief examination of the archival materials at ASD will allow us to determine what kinds of questions can be asked. Although they are not catalogued, the papers in the ASD archives are a treasure for any historian researching the early years of the rise of a deaf community in the United States. Most of the important documents related to the early background, development, establishment, and supervision of ASD have been preserved in the school's archives. There must be 5,000 to 6,000 manuscript pages that pertain only to deaf history, culture, and education before 1830, the year that Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet resigned the principalship of ASD. The records suggest he resigned owing to internal conflicts and disagreements with the Board of Trustees. Who were the individuals who initially thought of educating deaf students, what was their background, and how did they perceive such an undertaking? Three men, Lessons Learned from the Connecticut Asylum Mason Fitch Cogswell, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, and Laurent Clerc, share the major responsibility for founding the Connecticut Asylum, establishing its characteristics, and making their own contributions to educating deaf students. Their efforts add another dimension to nineteenth century historical reform. Cogswell was a Yale graduate and prominent Hartford physician who had a deaf daughter, Alice. It was his organizational and fiscal prowess that ensured the school's continuing success. T. H. Gallaudet, also a Yale graduate, was a frustrated minister, champion of the socially dispossessed, and neighbor of Cogswell. He became ASD's first principal and guided the institution through its rocky early years. Clerc, a deaf Frenchman who was a teacher at the Royal Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris, emigrated to the United States with Gallaudet in 1816 and assisted him in establishing the school. Clerc was responsible for introducing sign language as the sole method of instruction. The precise role Clerc played in developing the educational system at ASD and the larger contribution he made to the American deaf community are questions that still need to be answered. Cogswell, Gallaudet, and Clerc came together almost accidentally, yet they shaped the contours of deaf education for years to come. Much of this story is well known, but no historian, to my knowledge, has really mined the papers at ASD. These significant archives flesh out the background and details of the coming together of these three individuals who, perhaps inadvertently, provided an institutional setting around which deaf people could coalesce. At ASD we see simultaneously the emergence of a community and the beginnings of American Sign Language. A complete account of this process cannot be gleaned from...

Share