Sweet Bells Jangled: Laura Redden Searing, A Deaf Poet Restored

Preface

Preface Ifirst encountered Laura Redden through my work as a historian of women when the National Women’s History Project in California offered, and I purchased, a book written by Mabs Holcomb and Sharon Wood entitled Deaf Women: A Parade Through the Decades (San Diego: DawnSignPress, 1989). An endnote on page 111 told of a Minnesota town, Glyndon, allegedly named for a writer whose pen name was Howard Glyndon . As Project Director of the Minnesota Women’s History Month committee , I began to verify the reference to use this site for a future public history event, or for potential inclusion in one of our biography curriculums honoring Minnesota’s herstory of women. Eventually, I found Glyndon on a map, in northwestern Minnesota’s Red River Valley, 260 miles from St. Paul, where we were based. Next, I went hunting for a library reference. The documentation was clear. In 1872 a Civil War veteran named Luman Tenney founded and named a railroad expansion town “for writer Howard Glyndon.” But Howard was not a he, Howard was a she, named Laura C. Redden, or so veteran newsman Roy Johnson announced in 1958 in a Sunday column in the Fargo Forum. Johnson retold the 1872 tale and added the “remarkable fact of Laura Redden’s deafness,” new information gleaned from his recent discovery of a book written by Redden’s daughter Elsa. Next Johnson offered a poetic excerpt, a verse from a poem titled “Elsa,” which began, “My baby, My baby, there’s so much you must teach me;” and continued with more lines about dimples and cute smiles. Perhaps Johnson meant it as tribute to Elsa or, in what might be deemed typical male fashion of the times, a traditional example of themed verse authored by a woman poet. The poem certainly is not lyrical enough to send anyone searching anthologies to see other examples of the skill of a poet/mommy/town-namesake. However, Glyndon, Minnesota, is the only town in the United States named for a woman writer during her lifetime, and one visionary teacher in Glyndon, Lucia Schroeder, began an annual pageant with her fifth graders depicting this historic event. Thus another newspaper columnist met deadline and the story languished until Mabs and Sharon and I. I later learned from the family that Roy Johnson sent neither a thank-you note nor a copy of his column back ix to Elsa Mc Ginn, who had helpfully sent him a copy of her 1921 tribute to Howard Glyndon, her mother—Laura Redden Searing. That book, Echoes of Other Days, was the source of “Elsa.” So, the family itself, never knew of Luman Tenney’s honor of the pen of Howard Glyndon. However, Roy Johnson did pass Echoes of Other Days along to the local library, where in 1992 I acquired it through interlibrary loan. Thus I began my quest for additional information on Laura Redden. The journey has taken me through a myriad of incredible doors into the world of nineteenth-century Deaf culture and history. Within this deaf world lie a vast number of historic places, movements, and people that must be woven, when possible, into American and world histories, for the deaf experience complements and illuminates history as written by hearing people . For example, we can trace the growth of deaf education in the United States and better understand the still-ongoing communication controversies by following one fiercely independent deaf woman’s life journey. Throughout her eighty-four years, Laura Redden traveled extensively at home and abroad, using her gifted pen to earn her way as an observant journalist , insightful poet, and accomplished translator during a time when the majority of women were restricted by society into a domestic economy. Laura Redden’s nontraditional life easily compares to that of Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Fuller, and Jane Grey Swisshelm and without their detractors! The remarkable network among the state schools for the deaf has been a wonder and a privilege to explore. My husband and I have visited and done research at eleven state-run schools since the day in 1994 when I first drove cross-country to Gallaudet University in search of primary materials on Redden. Two of our daughters had taken ASL in high school and had made several deaf friends, but I knew no sign and, in fact, had had my hands slapped hard by my mother over my lifetime as she admonished gestures with “Don’t point! It’s not polite.” My four days...