Chapter one was definitely a lot of information yet very interesting. Although I got a little bit lost and confused at some parts along the way because of the many different people and places that kept coming up but after rereading it a couple times I understood it better. However, I did really enjoy learning more about the life of Thomas H. Gallaudet. I never really knew much about him other than all the incredible things he has done for the deaf community. But the work he has done outside of deaf education is absolutely inspiring to read as well. It's crazy how we're reading about yellow fever as we are currently going through a pandemic. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was born on December 10, 1787 in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania. He was an educational philanthropist and founder of the first college for the deaf within the United States. Gallaudet graduated from Yale College in 1805 studying theology at Andover Theological Seminary. It was said that Gallaudet was an outstanding student, graduating at the age of seventeen and at the top of his class. Due to his nervous disorders, here turned to live with his parents in Harford, Connecticut. In Harford, he met a young deaf girl named Alice Cogswell. She was the daughter of his neighbor, an eminent surgeon named Mason fitch Cogswell. Gallaudet attempted to teach Alice how to read, but with little success. Cogswell persuaded Gallaudet to go to Britain to investigate the educational methods of the best-known educators for deaf people at the time, the Braidwood family. Recognizing that he still wasn't ready to set up a school on his own, he called upon Clerc to accompany him back to America. On the way back, Clerc taught Thomas sign language and Thomas taught Clerc English, and together they established the American School for the Deaf in 1817. Laurent Clerc became the first deaf teacher of deaf students in the United States. Gallaudet later married one of the graduates of the school, Sophia Fowler, and they had eight children.The youngest child was named Edward Miner Gallaudet. At the age of 20, Edward Miner Gallaudet journeyed to Washington, D.C., to run a school for deaf children there. Seven years later, in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the charter to establish a national college for deaf students. Gallaudet University is named in honor of Edward's father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. It was interesting to me how he had a strange family history. I was surprised that no one in this family really knew much about his works
