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Growing into a New Century, 1910–1957 CHAPTER 2 p T he Gallaudet Board of Directors appointed Percival Hall,a graduate of Harvard College and a professor at Gallaudet,to succeed EMG as president,and he took office in September 1910.According to Albert Atwood,who was chairman of the board from 1946 to 1968,the directors would have offered the position to Edward Allen Fay,EMG’s vice president,but they knew that he would not accept the appointment.1 Fay was seventyseven years old,had already served Gallaudet for forty-five years,and was nearing retirement.In fact, he stayed for another ten years,and he received an honorary doctorate from the college in 1916. Hall was born September 16,1872,and he grew up in Washington,DC.His father,Asaph Hall,was a well-known astronomer who worked at the Naval Observatory.Because he had spent his childhood in Washington,Percival Hall was probably quite familiar with Gallaudet College.His roommate at Harvard had been Allan B.Fay,the son of Edward Allen Fay,and it was after visits to Kendall Green as a college student that Hall became interested in deaf education.Following graduation from Harvard in 1892,he enrolled as a student in the normal school at Gallaudet and then taught for several years at the New York School for the Deaf,before returning to teach mathematics at the college.He later became EMG’s secretary and the head of the normal school for a time.He was,of course,hearing. Percival Hall married Carolyn Clarke in June 1895,but she died on January 21,1896.In June 1900, he married Ethel Taylor,a deaf Gallaudet graduate who had received her BA shortly before their marriage.In 1910,Ethel Taylor Hall thus became the first deaf first lady of Gallaudet College.They had three children—Percival Hall,Jr.(MA 1935),Marion Hall Fisher,and Jonathan Hall (MA 1938)—and both sons were professors at the college.2 As an indication of what was expected of Gallaudet students (at least the men) at the time, the catalog for 1913 contained the following rules of conduct as “The General Principles of Order”: As the super structure upon which every well-built character must rest, students are enjoined to cherish reverence to God and respect His laws; in particular to have a strict regard to truth, avoiding as mean and unmanly all subterfuges and prevarications; to practice temperance in all things, and total abstinence in those that plainly work harm to the man; to be chaste of thought, word, and action; to be faithful in the performance of duty; to show a due regard to the rights and property of others; to be courteous to all persons and  Chapel Hall, 1950. 38 the history of gallaudet university prompt in the manifestation of respect to those, who, by reason of age, position or sex have a right to expect them. The catalog also said that students were “not allowed to walk on the railroad tracks, nor use tobacco, nor use intoxicating liquors, except on a permit from the President on a doctor’s prescription , or use firearms or engage in hazing.”3 The admonition against walking on the railroad tracks had to be taken particularly seriously. As Gallaudet alumnus Jack R. Gannon points out in Deaf Heritage, at a time when paved roads and sidewalks were few, many people chose to walk on railroad tracks, and deaf people were especially prone to being hit from behind by locomotives. According to The Silent World,“in the states that provide punishments for attempts at suicide, every deaf man found walking on the railroad should be arrested and given the full extent of the law.”4 Following EMG’s victory over the B & O Railroad in 1891 that kept the tracks off the Kendall Green campus itself,there was a period of continuing controversy over the eventual placement of the tracks for both the B & O and the Pennsylvania Railroads. By 1913,the tracks for both railroads had been located to the route currently used by Amtrak,originating at Union Station near the Capitol building,and running to the west of the Gallaudet campus next to New York Avenue.West Virginia Avenue had been extended to the east of the campus,and a new residential area,known as the Trinidad neighborhood ,developed along the avenue.The city of Washington was experiencing a period of growth that transformed the area around Kendall Green from rural to...

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