Mrs. Sigourney of Hartford: Poems and Prose on the Early American Deaf Community

Memoir of Phebe P. Hammond, a Pupil at the American Asylum at Hartford (1833), including an untitled poem about Phebe Hammond in heaven

92 Part 2 [7] Were language theirs, perchance their tale Of treasured grief or fear, Might cold or unresponsive fall Even on a brother’s ear,— [8] So may they grave* upon their minds In youth’s unfolding day, ’Tis better to commune with Heaven Than with their kindred clay. [9] The pomp of words may sometimes clog The ethereal spirit’s flight, But in the silence of their souls Burns one long Sabbath light,— [10] If God doth in that temple dwell, Their fancied loss is gain; Ye perfect listeners to His voice! Say, is our pity vain?* Memoir of Phebe P. Hammond, a Pupil at the American Asylum at Hartford (1833), including an untitled poem about Phebe Hammond in heaven This brief memoir of a heartbreakingly brief life of twelve years devotes far more pages to little Phebe’s death from tuberculosis than it does to her life. Passing lightly over the physical suffering of tuberculosis, Sigourney provides the details of Phebe’s mental suffering, as she worries and prays every day, alone in a separate room, for forgiveness of her sins. Gallaudet’s letter to the dying child, telling her in no uncertain terms “Perhaps you will die” and *engrave *pointless Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 92 4/4/2013 12:35:32 PM Deaf Hartford 93 urging her on to further prayer for forgiveness, will be particularly shocking to many present-day readers, who may wonder what sorts of sins a twelve-year-old deaf girl could have committed that would warrant such attention. But these passages reflect the belief, common in Protestant New England at the time, in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, which has it that every human being is born with a sinful nature inherited from Adam, and that the only remedy is salvation through Jesus Christ. Indeed, the chief purpose in educating deaf children, in the eyes of both Gallaudet and Sigourney, was to bring them to seek Jesus as their personal savior who would cleanse them of the sin with which they were born. Much of the interest for present-day readers will be in the relationship between the two deaf sisters from central Massachusetts, their attachment to one another being so strong that the younger sister, Frances, was allowed to enroll at the Asylum despite being underaged because the two could not bear a separation. What Sigourney saw as deeply entrenched affectional attachment certainly would have had a strong language element, as each sister would have understood, and been understood by, the other to a far greater extent than would have been the case with any other of the household members, who were all hearing. It’s not surprising that little Frances would have been loath to live without her sister in that family environment . Childhood language acquisition was poorly understood in the early nineteenth century, so deaf children were kept from school, the only place most of them could learn any language, until they were ten years old, long after the normal age of language acquisition . Sigourney praises the sisters’ spelling skills as better than that of hearing children of the same age, but deaf people are generally excellent spellers because they are not mislead by phonetics. Of greater interest today are the descriptions of the girls entertaining their friends and family with the large number of signs they learned, which surely means that family members, at least the younger family members, were learning the sign language that was developing at the school—Sigourney later depicts the girls’ cousin as a fluent signer. We notice, too, that all the girls’ teachers and classmates have name signs, still a prominent feature of ASL. These name signs are distinctive sign lexemes given to deaf people by their Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 93 4/4/2013 12:35:32 PM 94 Part 2 peers, traditionally by classmates in residential schools if not by Deaf parents, and to those few hearing people with whom a deaf group is in close contact, such as a teacher. They typically reference an aspect of the person’s appearance or a physical quirk; today, they also usually incorporate an initial of the person’s name, although this seems to have been less common in the past. The name sign is then used in lieu of spelling out personal names on the fingers whenever the person is referred to in conversation. This...