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Thomas Gallaudet (1787–1851) was a minister and an educator whose neighbor, Alice Cogswell, was a 9-year-old Deaf child. He traveled in Europe to study educational methods for teaching the Deaf. While in the British Isles, Gallaudet met Laurent Clerc and two of his companions, who invited him to France to study the educational methods of teaching the Deaf using manual communication. He sailed back to the United States with Clerc, and they raised money and established the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. Alice Cogswell was one of its first graduates.
(Penilla II, A., Taylor, A. American Sign Language For Dummies John Wiley & Sons)
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