Peter Wallace Gallaudet (April 21, 1756 – May 17, 1843) was a personal secretary to US President

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

in Philadelphia. He married Jane "Jeannette" Hopkins of

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

, in 1787. Gallaudet lost both parents by the age of 18 and went to live with his uncle, Elisha Gallaudet, who was the engraver of the first US coin, the 1776 "Continental Dollar". Gallaudet enlisted as a soldier in the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

and took part in the

Battle of Trenton The Battle of Trenton was a small but pivotal American Revolutionary War battle on the morning of December 26, 1776, in Trenton, New Jersey. After General George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American m ...

, December 26, 1776. After Gallaudet's wife died in 1818, he went to work as a commission merchant. In 1824, he moved to

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, to work in the Register's Office at the United States Treasury. In 1834, he organized a board of directors and received papers of incorporation to start a

manual labor school A manual labor college was a type of school in the United States, primarily between 1825 and 1860, in which work, usually agricultural or mechanical, supplemented academic activity. The manual labor model was intended to make educational opportuni ...

and orphan asylum in Washington, D.C. Money was raised for this purpose, but the money was held in reserve and the school was never built. Gallaudet and his friend Michael Nourse, who also worked at the Treasury Department, raised $2,000 by selling a booklet titled "A facsimile copy of the Accounts of General Washington's expenses during the Revolutionary War, also a copy of a line of march proposed by him for the British army in the expedition of 1758 against Fort Du Quesne." In 1838, a pamphlet was authorized for publication by the board of directors of the manual labor school organization which was written by Peter Wallace Gallaudet titled: "A System of Education, on the Principle of Connecting Science with Useful Labor." The main essay of the pamphlet is dated September 30, 1829 and was originally published by G. Gallaudet in . In the essay, G. Gallaudet supports the educational philosophy of

Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg (27 June 1771 – 21 November 1844) was a Swiss educationalist and agronomist. Biography He was born at Bern. His father was of patrician family, and a man of importance in his canton, and his mother was a granddaug ...

, a philosophy which, he explains, was based partly on the educational philosophy of

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (, ; 12 January 1746 – 17 February 1827) was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach. He founded several educational institutions both in German- and French-speaking r ...

. As mentioned on page 241 of the biography of Gallaudet's son, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, written by Gallaudet's grandson, Edward Miner Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet had also become acquainted with the educational philosophy of von Fellenberg and, in 1833, visited a manual labor school in

Greenfield, Massachusetts Greenfield is a city in and the county seat of Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. Greenfield was first settled in 1686. The population was 17,768 at the 2020 census. Greenfield is home to Greenfield Community College, the Pioneer Val ...

, which followed von Fellenberg's philosophy. By 1860, seventeen years after Gallaudet's death, his grandson

Edward Miner Gallaudet Edward Miner Gallaudet (February 5, 1837 – September 26, 1917), son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was the first president of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. (then known as the Columbia Institution for the ...

had become superintendent of a school for the deaf. Edward made arrangements with the directors of the corporation of the manual labor school that was never built, and together they approached Congress to obtain permission to dissolve the corporation and cede the funds to the school that Edward had helped establish, the Columbia School for the Deaf, which was the school which, in 1864, added a collegiate department and became Gallaudet College (1894) and then

Gallaudet University Gallaudet University ( ) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It was founded in 1864 as a grammar school for both deaf and blind children. It was the first sc ...

(1986). Gallaudet was the father of

Thomas Hopkins 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 ...

, the co-founder of the first permanent school for the Deaf in North America, the

American School for the Deaf The American School for the Deaf (ASD), originally ''The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf'', is the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States, and the first school for children with disa ...

West Hartford, Connecticut West Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, west of downtown Hartford. The population was 64,083 at the 2020 census. The town's popular downtown area is colloquially known as "West Hartford Center," or simply "The C ...

. Gallaudet was the second of six children. His siblings' names were: Edgar (1753–1790); Thomas (1758–1759); David (1760–1761); Thomas (b. 1762); and Catherine (1766–1786).Boatner, Maxine Tull. 1959. Voice of the Deaf, p. xiv, citing Virginia W. Somerville.

Sources

Gallaudet, Peter Wallace. 1838.
A System of Education, on the Principle of Connecting Science with Useful Labor
Re-published by Order of the Trustees of Washington's Manual Labor School and Male Orphan Asylum''. Washington: Printed by Peter Force.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gallaudet, Peter Wallace American militiamen in the American Revolution United States Department of the Treasury officials 1756 births 1843 deaths

Sources

See also

References