There are a couple of very interesting Victorian type of buildings.............on Galludet U. in ne wash dc...................near the entrance from Florida ave........................

Biography[edit]

Gallaudet was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents moved to Hartford, Connecticut when he was 13. Wanting to be in the ministry from a young age he stayed behind as a youth minister, but because of health reasons he had to eventually move to Connecticut to live with his parents.^[1] He attended Yale University, earning hisbachelor's degree in 1805,^[2] graduating at the age of seventeen,^[3] with highest honors,^[4] and then earned a master's degree at Yale in 1808.^[5][6] He wanted to do many things such as study law, engage in trade, or study theology. In 1814, Gallaudet became a preacher following his graduation from Andover Theological Seminary after a two-year course of study.^[7]

However, Gallaudet's wish to become a professional minister was put aside when he met Alice Cogswell, on 25 May, the nine-year-old deaf daughter of a neighbor, Dr. Mason Cogswell.^[8] On that day, as he observed her playing he wanted to teach her, and started to teach Alice what different objects were and their names, teaching her words by writing them with a stick in the dirt, and by drawing pictures of them as well. Then Cogswell asked Gallaudet to travel to Europe to study methods for teaching deaf students, especially those of the Braidwood family in England. Gallaudet found the Braidwoods unwilling to share knowledge of their oral communication method and himself financially limited. At the same time, he also was not satisfied that the oral method produced desirable results.

While still in Great Britain, he met Abbé Sicard, head of the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris, and two of its deaf faculty members, Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu. Sicard invited Gallaudet to Paris to study the school's method of teaching the deaf using manual communication. Impressed with the manual method, Gallaudet studied teaching methodology under Sicard, learning sign language from Massieu and Clerc, who were both highly educated graduates of the school.

Having persuaded Clerc to accompany him, Gallaudet sailed back to America. The two men toured New England and successfully raised private and public funds to found a school for deaf students in Hartford, which later became known as the American School for the Deaf (ASD). Young Alice was one of the first seven students at ASD.

In 1821, he married one of his former students, Sophia Fowler. They had 8 children as well.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet died in Hartford on September 10, 1851, aged 63, and was buried in Hartford's Cedar Hill Cemetery plot section 3. There is a residence hall named in his honor at nearby Central Connecticut State University in New Britain. There is also a residence hall named in his honor at the University of Hartford in West Hartford.