Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet Monument - West Hartford, CT - Civil Rights Memorials on Waymarking.com

An obelisk with sphere on top rises from a base. The front of the base contains a bronze relief of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet teaching a blind young girl, likely Alice Cogswell is first pupil, who is sitting on his lap, to use American Sign Language, which he developed. Two children are watching the lesson in progress.

The side of the base contains a marble plaque which is inscribed:

The back of the base has a bronze relied inscribed GALLAUDET above is the name Gallaudet spelled out in American Sign Language which he invented.

The monument was created in 1854 and located at the original American School for the Deaf in Hartford. When the school moved to West Hartford the monument, which was in disrepair, was placed in storage. In 2020 the monument was repaired and relocated to the campus of the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford.

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.