Thomas Gallaudet (June 3, 1822 – August 27, 1902), an American Episcopal priest, was born in

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 ...

. His father,

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 ...

, was the renowned pioneer of deaf education in the United States. His mother,

Sophia Fowler Gallaudet Sophia Fowler Gallaudet (March 20, 1798 – May 13, 1877) was the wife of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. As the founding matron of the school that became Gallaudet University, she played an important role in deaf history, even playing a key role in ...

, who was deaf, was the founding matron of the school that became

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 ...

Biography

After graduating from

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, Gallaudet accepted a teaching position at the New York Institution for Deaf-mutes, where he met and married a deaf woman, Elizabeth Budd. They had seven children, one of whom died in infancy, named Laurent Clerc Gallaudet. He was most certainly named after the man his father brought back from France to help start his deaf-mute school,

Laurent Clerc Louis Laurent Marie Clerc (; 26 December 1785 – 18 July 1869) was a French teacher called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" and was regarded as the most renowned deaf person in American Deaf History. He was taught by Abbé Sicard and dea ...

. Following in his father's footsteps, in 1852, Gallaudet established St. Ann's Church for Deaf Mutes in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. In 1872 Gallaudet, Jane Middleton, and the Church Mission to Deaf-Mutes established the Home for Aged and Infirm Deaf-Mutes in a brownstone located at 220 East 13th Street in New York City. Jane served as the first Superintendent and Matron of the home from 1872 until her death in 1885. In 1886, after years of hard work and fund raising, the Home was moved to

Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsi ...

and was renamed the Gallaudet Home for Deaf-Mutes. Gallaudet was also instrumental in the work of the Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd, a group of women engaged in urban ministry in and around New York City. One of Gallaudet's students, Henry Winter Syle, became the first deaf person to be

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the denominational hierarchy composed of other clergy) to perform va ...

by the Episcopal Church. Both Gallaudet and Syle are listed in the Episcopal Church's

Calendar of Saints The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context d ...

for August 27. Gallaudet is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.

References

External links

Mission St. Clare: Thomas GallaudetReports of the Church Mission to Deaf-Mutes
from

Project Canterbury Project Canterbury (sometimes abbreviated as PC) is an online archive of material related to the history of Anglicanism. It was founded by Richard Mammana, Jr. in 1999 with a grant from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, and is ho ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gallaudet, Thomas 1822 births 1902 deaths Anglican saints Religious leaders from Hartford, Connecticut People from Dutchess County, New York 19th-century Christian saints American saints American Episcopal priests Educators from New York (state) 19th-century American educators 19th-century American Episcopalians 19th-century American clergy