Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and the American School for the Deaf

In the early 1800s, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet became inspired by a young deaf neighbor, Alice Cogswell, to travel and learn how to communicate with the Deaf. He travelled to Europe where he met the Braidwood family who-to his dismay-focused on only the oral method of teaching. Students were expected to learn how to read lips and speak. After quitting his mission to work with them, he met Abbe Sicard, the director of the Institut Royal des Sourds-Muets in Paris. Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu, two faculty members, Abbe Sicard, and Gallaudet travelled back to their school in France. Gallaudet needed to return to the states, but had not accomplished what he had hoped to, and asked Laurent Clerc to go back to America with him. Clerc taught Gallaudet Sign Language, and Gallaudet taught Clerc English. Together, they established the first school for the Deaf in 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut, now known as the American School for the Deaf.