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| Gallaudet > Clerc Center > Information on Deafness > Edward Miner Gallaudet | search | site index |
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A Father, a Son, and a University: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
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by Cathryn Carroll I Want to
Be Rich!
"I've been thinking about your future, Eddie." Startled, Edward Miner Gallaudet looked up at his father. Edward was the baby of his family, the youngest of eight brothers and sisters. But he was growing up. He supposed his father was right. It was time to think about his future. "Have you thought about teaching deaf children?" asked his father. Edward sighed. Teaching deaf children didn't sound like very much fun at all. "It was the best job I ever had," his father said. Edward nodded and looked away. Even though his father, the Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, had retired from teaching before he was born, Edward knew all about his work. He knew that as a young man, his father had met a deaf girl and decided to help set up a school for deaf children. He had traveled to Europe to learn to teach deaf students. He had ended up in France—and come back home with the French deaf teacher, Laurent Clerc. Then Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Laurent Clerc, and Mason Cogswell had started their school in Hartford. It was called the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons. (The school was later renamed the American School for the Deaf.) Edward was proud of his father. He watched respectfully as the older man continued to talk. But he had stopped listening.
Oh, Edward liked deaf people just fine. After all, his own mother was deaf. She had been the 14th student to enter his father's school. His father had married her right after she graduated. And Edward loved sign language, too. He reckoned that he had learned sign language even before he learned to talk. But teaching? Edward waited for his father to finish. Then he shook his head. "I don't want to be a teacher," he said. "I want to be a businessman. I want to be a businessman. I want to be rich!" He felt quite bold to talk to his father this way. But it was the truth! He hoped his father would not be angry. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was not angry. A twinkle appeared in his eye. Then he laughed. "Just don't be a banker," he smiled at his son. "It's too narrowing." He ruffled Edward's hair as he spoke. Edward, the
Banker Edward Gallaudet graduated from high school when he was 15 years old. His father, so often sick, died just as Edward finished his studies. Ready for a career, Edward found his first job—as a banker! He began his job excitedly. But soon—as his father had predicted—he felt bored. "There must be something in life more important than counting money," he thought. But he was not sure what it was. Edward decided to go to college and try to find out. He picked Trinity College in Hartford. When the principal of the Connecticut Asylum, the school that Edward's father started, learned that Edward was going to a college nearby, he asked him to teach school at the asylum. Edward Gallaudet accepted the offer immediately. He taught part time while he was still a college student. It seemed that his father's prophecy was coming true. Summons from
Washington After a while, Edward began to feel frustrated again. Teaching was as boring as banking in some ways. He felt he had more important things to do. He wanted to make his mark in the world.
When his father was alive, the elder Gallaudet had talked about opening a college for deaf students. Now Edward learned that other teachers at the school thought the idea was a good one. The time had come for a college for America's deaf people! But starting a college took money. People had ideas and talent. But no one seemed to have any money. Gallaudet was ready to give up on the idea of a college for deaf people when he got a letter from Washington, D.C. The letter was from Amos Kendall, a man who had started a school for deaf and blind children near his home in Washington. Kendall wrote that he wanted Gallaudet to be in charge of his school. The school was called the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind. Bring Your Mother! Excited, Gallaudet traveled to Washington, D.C., and met Kendall. He wanted to accept the job, he said. He was ready to start work right away. But he didn't want only a school, Gallaudet told Kendall. He wanted to start a college!
As Amos Kendall listened to Gallaudet, he thought about the warnings. Many people had warned him that hiring Gallaudet would be a mistake. Edward Gallaudet may be the son of a famous father, they said, but his dreams were too grand. Worse, Gallaudet was only 20 years old—far too young to be the head of an important school in the nation's capital. But Kendall liked grand dreams, and he liked Gallaudet. He thought of a solution to the problem of his young age. "Bring your mother with you!" Kendall told Gallaudet. Gallaudet agreed immediately. He knew that his mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, white-haired and grand motherly, deaf and fluent in American Sign Language, would be an excellent matron for the new school. Gallaudet and his mother moved to their new home, and Gallaudet began repairing the buildings where the new school would be. He hired James Denison, a deaf man and one of his former students in Connecticut, to be a teacher. That fall, 12 deaf and blind students entered the Columbia Association, whose campus was called Kendall Green.
Home Life A year later, Gallaudet married. He brought his new wife, Jane Fessenden, to Kendall Green to live. After 10 years, she became sick and died, leaving Gallaudet with two daughters. A son had died when he was only a baby. Later, Gallaudet fell in love with Susan Denison, the 17-year-old sister of his friend James Denison, who had become principal of the school. Gallaudet and Susan married in 1868. Susan took care of Gallaudet's two daughters and had five children of her own. They lived happily in their large house on Kendall Green. Everyone called it "House One." College Dream
America was reeling toward Civil War. During that war, Union soldiers set up a military camp on Kendall Green. Through the turmoil, Gallaudet stayed faithful to his dream of starting a college for deaf students. He wrote a bill and took it to the U.S. Congress. If Congress would pass the bill, the Columbia Institution would be able to grant college degrees. Some of the senators and representatives disagreed with the bill. They did not think that the Columbia Institution should become a college. Some of them did not even think that deaf people could go to college! Amos Kendall was skeptical, too. But President Abraham Lincoln supported the bill. When it finally passed through Congress, Lincoln signed it into law. Once the bill was law, Kendall supported it. He made Gallaudet, who was only 27 years old, the college's first president. That summer, Congress found money to buy 13 acres of land next to the Columbia Institution. That fall, 13 deaf students began college classes. American became the first country in the world to have a college for deaf students.
Sign Trouble
In 1880, Gallaudet joined the teachers and principals of schools for deaf children from around the world at a famous meeting in Milan, Italy. At the meeting, most of the teachers decided that sign language was old-fashioned. The best way to teach deaf children was through speech and lipreading, they said. There was no place for sign language in schools for deaf children. Gallaudet and the Americans disagreed. Years before, Gallaudet himself had visited many schools in Europe in search of the best ways of teaching deaf students. As a result of his trip, Gallaudet believed that deaf people should have the chance to learn speech, lipreading, and signs. After the conference in Milan, many of the world's teachers and schools stopped using sign language. But at the world's only college for deaf people, teachers and students continued to sign. Edward Gallaudet's decision helped keep American Sign Language alive and strong on the college campus. Becoming
"Gallaudet" Graduates of the Columbia Institution's college programed asked the college's governing board to change its name to "Gallaudet College," after Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Edward's father, the man who helped start deaf education in America.
Growing Old
Gallaudet remained president of Gallaudet College for 46 years. As he grew older, he earned many awards, including honorary doctoral degrees from his own alma mater, Trinity College, and his father's old college, Yale. The French gave him the medal of the Legion of Honor. He was 80 years old when he died in 1917. Epilogue In 1986, Gallaudet College became Gallaudet University through an act of the U.S. Congress. Today deaf and hard of hearing students graduate from Gallaudet and go on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, scientists... whatever they want to become. Gallaudet University serves as a beacon of educational opportunity for deaf people from all over the world. |
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| Gallaudet > Clerc Center > Information on Deafness > Edward Miner Gallaudet | search | site index |
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Laurent Clerc National Deaf
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