Henry Winter Syle (November 9, 1846 – January 6, 1890) was the first deaf person to be ordained a priest in the

Episcopal Church in the United States The Episcopal Church, based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere, is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of ...

. Henry Winter Syle was born in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China; Syle was a student and parishioner of

Thomas Gallaudet Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (December 10, 1787 – September 10, 1851) was an American educator. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and he becam ...

. He was

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

from an early age. He attended

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

in Hartford, Connecticut, St. John's College in

Cambridge, England Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became ...

, and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...

. Syle was encouraged to become a priest by Gallaudet. Ordained on October 14, 1883, he became the first deaf clergyman in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. He established a congregation for the deaf in 1888. Syle struggled with poor health his whole life. He died of pneumonia on Jan. 6, 1890, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is commemorated along with his teacher,

on August 27 on the Episcopal calendar of saints.

References

External links

Papers and Biographical Sketch of Henry Winter Syle, Gallaudet University archives
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Syle, Henry Winter 1846 births 1890 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge American Episcopal priests Anglican saints Deaf religious workers American deaf people Deaths from pneumonia in Pennsylvania 19th-century American Episcopalians 19th-century American clergy

See also

References

External links