FIRST - Founder Of A School For The Deaf In America - West Hartford, CT - First of its Kind on Waymarking.com

A 76" by 43" by 50" sculpture of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell rests on a 55" by 54" by 60" base. This is the second casting of this work. It replaces a previous casting that was made in 1888 and accidentally destroyed in 1920. It was created by Daniel Chester French and cast at the American Art Foundry. It was installed at its present location in 1924.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, teacher of the deaf, is is wearing a frock coat, trousers buttoned at the cuffs, waistcoat with lapels, and a bow tie. He seated while his first student, Alice Cogswell, wearing a long dress, stands at his right side. Gallaudet's left arm around the girl's waist while he makes the sign for the letter "A" with his right hand. Alice Cogswell is making the "A" sign with her right hand. She is holding a book to her chest with her left hand. A coat hangs over the right side and back of the claw foot chair. There are inscriptions on all four sides of the base.

The front of base to the left of a bronze wreath:

On the north side between two torches:

On the south side between two torches:

On the east side:

The Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was born in Philadelphia, PA on December 10, 1787. His family moved to Hartford, CT when he was 13 years old. He graduated Yale University with highest honors in 1805, and then earned a master's degree from Yale in 1808. He became a minister upon graduation from Andover Theological Seminary in 1815.

As a pastor Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet met a deaf-mute child, Alice Cogswell, whose father, Dr. Mason Cogswell, wished to establish a special school for deaf children. Gallaudet went to Europe in 1815 to study established systems of symbolic instruction for the deaf. There he met Laurent Clerc who took him to Paris to learn Abbé Sicard's method for teaching deaf-mutes. Gallaudet mastered his methods and returned to America and on April 15, 1817 established with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell the first institution for the education of the deaf in North America, now known as the American School for the Deaf. In 1894 Gallaudet University was named in honor.

Alice Cogswell was the first student at the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb. She was by all accounts an intelligent and enthusiastic student. After graduating in 1824 she traveled as an ambassador to show that the deaf are not only capable of being taught, but they are also capable of the same level of intelligence that the hearing. Alice he died at the age on December 30, 1830 at age 25, twenty-three days after the death of her father, Dr. Mason Cogswell.

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