 The Rt Rev Jack L Iker, SSC, Bishop The Rev Mark A Stockstill, SSC, Vicar Office 325.356.2997 Vicarage 325.356.2198 Cell 325.330.2411 mastockstill@yahoo.com |
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Thomas
Gallaudet was born in 1822, in Hartford, Connecticut. His mother, Sophia was
deaf, and his father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, was the founder of the West
Hartford School for the deaf, which was the principal institution for the
education of the deaf in America from 1806 to 1857 (the year of the founding
of Gallaudet College in Washington, DC). The father had intended to become a
priest, but had become an educator of the deaf instead. The son also
intended to seek ordination, but was persuaded by his father to work for a
while first as a teacher of the deaf. He did, and so met and married Miss
Elizabeth Budd, who was deaf. He was ordained in 1851, and the next year
established St. Ann's Church in New York, especially for deaf persons, with
services primarily in sign language. As a result of his work, congregations
for the deaf were established in many cities. (Alternatively, some
congregations that are mostly hearing will have someone standing near the
front and signing the service for the benefit of deaf parishioners.)
Gallaudet died 27 August 1902.
One of
Gallaudet's students and parishioners was Henry Winter Syle, deaf from an
early age, who had attended Trinity College (Hartford, Conn), St John's
(Cambridge, England), and Yale. Gallaudet encouraged him to become a priest,
and in 1876 he became the first deaf person to be ordained by the Episcopal
Church in the United States. He established a congregation for the deaf in
1888, and died 6 January 1890.