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Auction: 313 - Numismatic Collector's Series - Ft. Worth, TX
Lot: 1430

American Asylum for the Deaf Interesting series of letters, including an interesting ALS by George Henry Loring, a deaf student at the Hartford American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, 4 full pages (possibly with missing pages, though the writer´s style makes it unclear if he has simply skipped from one sentence to another), 4to, January 27, 1818. He writes to an unidentified Hartford native in Washington DC that the school´s co-founder Laurent "Clerc...teaches the deaf and dumb, and they attend and write on the slate every day...during 3 hours or 2 hours...Mr. Clerc always teaches the deaf and dumb about the bible every Saturday...He gives Mr. [co-founder Thomas Hopkins] Gallaudet some signs for teaching his 7 pupils....You may tell [US Senator and Asylum benefactor Josiah Quincy] about my character. My eye is blind, but one is not...I am little and deaf and dumb boy. I am 11 years old. I was born in Boston..." With ALS from JL Skinner to Hartford pillar Nathaniel Terry, 1 page, Washington March 22, 1819. He thanks Terry "together with your other fellow citizens, for the successful, very honorable manner, in which you have accomplished the object of their wishes, in regard to the Connecticut Asylum. The Asylum...is one of those sublime refinements, which belong to the social state in its highest improvements..." With a pair of letters from 1821 concerning the sale of land owned by the asylum in and near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. One 1821 letter with partial fold splits, otherwise all VG. The American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (now the American School for the Deaf) was the first such institution to be successfully established in the country (a similar school in Virginia lasted for just a year). It came about when Thomas H Gallaudet was engaged by a local surgeon to create a school suitable for his daughter, Alice Cogswell, who had lost her hearing in a childhood illness. Gallaudet traveled to Europe, where he enlisted established teacher of the deaf Laurent Clerc. They returned to Hartford and opened the asylum in 1817 with a class of seven students, including Miss Cogswell and George Loring, whose letter appears here. It was at the asylum that Clerc´s French sign language, along with many additions from students´ own home-made signs, developed into American Sign Language. [4]

Estimate
$300 to $400