| This is where it all began in 1817, when Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a recent Yale graduate and ordained clergyman, met the Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell family and their deaf daughter, Alice. Embarking on a voyage to Europe to learn the art of educating deaf children, Gallaudet encountered the exciting work of l’Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris (school for the deaf in Paris, France). He then enlisted Laurent Clerc, a talented, young, deaf teacher to join him in a historic journey back home to establish the first permanent school for the deaf in the United States.
|