Biography of sophia fowler gallaudet

Then in , Gallaudet proposed marriage. Concerned that her schooling would end, it was not until he assured that her education would continue that she agreed to marry him. Gallaudet and Sophia were married 30 years and had eight children. In , their son, Edward Miner Gallaudet, became principal of the first school for the deaf and blind in Washington, D.

He asked his mother to move with him. Used with permission from the Gallaudet University Alumni Association. Revised by Vivion Smith and Ellen Beck. Gallaudet University, chartered in , is a private university for deaf and hard of hearing students. All rights reserved. Email Us. Back to ESL practice reading exercises. First Name Required.

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Biography of sophia fowler gallaudet

Subject Required. Select what best describes your relationship to Gallaudet University so we can effectively route your email. Email Required. In the spring of , her father learned that some gentlemen at Hartford were about to establish a school for the deaf. Soon after, hearing that these gentlemen were at New Haven, he went there in order to meet them, taking her with him.

He told her by signs of his hope that they would be able to teach her to read, to write, to cipher, -- to acquire, she afterward said, it seemed to her, knowledge without end. She grew radiant with the prospect of satisfying the only craving of which her nature felt a need. Not long after the meeting at New Haven, Mr. Gallaudet visited the home of the Fowlers, in Guilford, and the same spring Sophia became a pupil in the Hartford school.

Her name appears as the fifteenth in the order of those received at the opening, Alice Cogswell's being the first. Of her progress as a pupil it is possible to judge only by her later development. Those who are familiar with the difficulties to be encountered will understand the fact that for a number of years her acquirements were confined to the common English branches.

Owing to her zeal and vigor of mind, her advancement in these was rapid. In the spring of , however, just at the period when a bright deaf-mute pupil may be expected to attain a fair degree of proficiency in the subjects indicated, her studies were interrupted in a manner quite unanticipated by all the parties concerned except one. 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 lobbying US congressmen in the effort to establish Gallaudet then the "National Deaf-Mute College".

She was appointed to be the first matron of the Columbia Institution on May 30, , and held the position for nine years, until August 1, Born deaf, she first attended school at age 19, starting along with her sister Parnel at the new school for the Deaf in Hartford in and continued her studies until the Spring of While she was a student there she became engaged to the principal of the school, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.

Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, named as the "Mother of the American Deaf," was honored and memorialized in Angeline Fuller Fischer 's The Silent Worker , in , to remind young deaf people of her influences that has pervaded Gallaudet College for so many years, and of her contributions to its early growth as an institution of higher education. A bronze memorial tablet, sculpted by Eugene Hannan, was unveiled Guilford, Connecticut in The tablet was to recognize her important role in contributing to the America School for the Deaf, which her husband, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, is a co-founder of and helping to establish Gallaudet College, which her son, Edward Miner Gallaudet is a founder of.