Gallaudet, Edward Miner

Edward Miner Gallaudet, (born February 5, 1837, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.—died September 26, 1917, Hartford), American educator and administrator who helped establish Gallaudet University, the first institute of higher education for the deaf. He was also known as a leading proponent of manualism—the use of sign language for teaching the deaf.

Gallaudet was the youngest of eight children born to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet—who had helped found the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons (now called the American School for the Deaf), which was the first permanent American school for the deaf—and Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, a woman who had attended the institution. While studying at Trinity College (B.S., 1856) in Hartford, Edward taught part-time at the Connecticut Asylum. In 1857 he became superintendent of the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind in Washington, D.C., a school that Amos Kendall had founded. In 1864 Gallaudet and others successfully petitioned the U.S. Congress to allow the school to grant college degrees; Pres. Abraham Lincoln signed the charter into law. Gallaudet served as president (1864–1910) of the expanded institution, later called Gallaudet University (named in honour of his father).

In 1880 Gallaudet traveled to Milan for an international conference for educators of the deaf. At the meeting, delegates passed a resolution that banned sign language and declared oralism—the use of lip reading and speech—as the only approved instruction of the deaf. Although Gallaudet acknowledged the need for oralism, he believed in the value of sign language, and he subsequently emerged as a spokesman for manualism. He frequently found himself in opposition to Alexander Graham Bell, who advocated for speech and lip reading.

Gallaudet wrote numerous articles as well as the biography Life of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1888).