Hartford Connecicut..Dr. Mason Fitch Cogwell, alumnus of Yale…favorite deaf daughter Alice.2 options…sent child overseas to famous Braidwood academy in Edinburgh, Scotland or hired a private tutor to teach your child to speak, read and write. If poor child stayed home or send them to asylum.Dr. Cogwell convened a meeting of city fathers and raised money to go to Europe and learn about educationg the deaf. He could not get help from Braidwood academy they guarded their “secret”. He then visited the French National Institute. in 1816. With funds dwindeling Clerc agreed to come to US. Sincade drew agreement to let him go for 3 years. The American Asylum for the Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opened in rented quarters in Hartford on April 15, 1817.Asl was not taught as a subject in class, it was employed as the medium of communication, along with written English. the schools gols were English literacy, industriousness, and Congregational style morality.It did not include speech trainng.Clerc married Eliza Crocker..first deaf marriage in the country.
ASL in a unique language with its own grammatical rules and syntax.
Historically ASL has two major contributors : Laurent Clerc and the Vineyarders. Clerc (1785-1869) was the first deaf teacher of the deaf in the US, and co-founder of the American School for the Deaf at Hartford, Connecticut, the first school of its kind here. “Old Hartford”
ASL is a hybrid of LSF and indigenous sign language.
What is Creolization? Young Vineyarders who attended “Old Hartford” broughttheir native sign-dialect with them, but picked up ASL at school, then brought back their acquired signs when they returned to the Vineyard, and used these “new” signs when communicating with others, who in turn picked them up. The “new signs thus became part of the Vineyard dialect. This process is called “creoliation – a subordinate anguage picks up words and usages from a “dominant” language,