Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,964

This is the grave of Laurent Clerc.

Born in 1785 in La Blame France, a small town in the foothills of the Alps, Clerc grew up well off. His father was the town’s mayor. But Clerc was not a healthy kid. He was deaf and had little to no ability to smell. For a long time, his family thought this was because he had a horrible accident as a baby where he fell off a chair and into a fire, suffering severe burns. And while that didn’t help, Clerc later figured this was probably not the issue. He was just born deaf. The smell thing is more curious, but he was probably born with that too. Anyway, the French had developed some early education for the deaf and Clerc was sent to the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, which had been established in the 1750s.

Clerc proved an excellent student and after he grew up, started working with his teachers Abbe Sicard and Jean Massieu on deaf education. In 1815, he went with them to London to give a lecture on deaf education. There, he met Thomas Gallaudet, who was pioneering deaf education in the United States and was on a trip to Europe to learn about the best methods available, hoping to start his own schools, which he would succeed in doing. Gallaudet then visited their school in Paris and invited Clerc to come to the United States and help him. The French had already developed sign language, at least in some form, and Clerc taught this pioneering method of communication of Gallaudet. So you can see why the latter would want to bring this brilliant man to the U.S.

Clerc readily accepted the offer to try his hand in America. He and Gallaudet opened the first school for the deaf in America, in Hartford. That’s now the American School for the Deaf. It was in fact to find competent teachers to found the school that Gallaudet went to Europe. Connecticut was willing to use public funds for such an institution, but it wanted it done right and it didn’t seem to them like anyone in the U.S. could really do it. In fact, in 1818, it became the first public institution of higher education to ever receive a grant from the federal government. I guess this is when the Deep State started or something. Trump is probably pulling all funding from deaf education as we speak. In fact, Pro Publica just published an article about this very thing! So that’s just great. MAGA is pre-1818 treatment of the deaf.

Clerc’s school was also integrated, beginning in 1825, at a time when the color line was pretty strong even in deaf schools. Also, Clerc married one of his first students, a woman named Eliza Crocker Boardman, who is buried with him. The school was pretty intense–the state would only pay for 5 years of education, so the goal was to teach as much as possible and then get them out of there. This also meant that many of his students became trained to teach others. Clerc also did a lot of training of the hearing folks to help them become teachers too. Clerc once also appeared before Congress. President James Monroe attended and became interested in sign language after seeing Clerc’s skills.

Also, because of Clerc, about 2/3 of American Sign Language words from that era have French origins. Or maybe it’s 2/3 of words overall, I’m not that familiar with how sign works that well myself.

Clerc lived and worked at his school for most of the rest of the life. He died in Hartford in 1869, at the age of 83.

Laurent Clerc is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut.

If you would like this series to visit other people involved in deaf education, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Thomas Gallaudet is also buried in Hartford, but a different cemetery. Guess I will have to go back. If there’s one American city worth multiple trips, it’s definitely Hartford! Roy Kay Holcomb is in Alexander, Texas. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.