Laurent Clerc: The Apostle of the Deaf in America

No discussion of the origins of ASL can be completed without mentioning Laurent Clerc, a Deaf teacher from France. 

In 1816, Clerc crossed the Atlantic to the United States and, the following year, he became one of the founders of the country's first permanent school for the Deaf. 

Clerc was born in France in 1785. His family believed he lost his hearing due to an accident that injured his face when he was one year old. It is known that the scar on his cheek resulting from that incident later became the basis for his name sign. 

He entered a school for the Deaf in Paris at the age of twelve and soon became a teacher there. A turning point came in 1815 when he met Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, an American minister, who came to London to seek a way to teach a Deaf girl from his neighborhood. Finding an answer in French Sign Language, Gallaudet invited Clerc to the United States, and Clerc boarded a ship bound for America.

In April 1817, the two men opened a school in Hartford, Connecticut, now known as the American School for the Deaf. It is the oldest school for the deaf in North America. The French Sign Language brought in by teachers like Clerc, blended with the gestures students used at home and regional sign languages, eventually evolved into American Sign Language (ASL).

Although many people believed that deaf individuals could not be educated at that time, Clerc successfully challenged that misconception by excelling as a respected teacher and pioneering sign language education in America.