Deaf and Hard of Hearing Canada

                     Home    D&HH Culture    About us    Contact us   Links

Laurent Clerc

Teacher, co-founder of the first permanent school for the deaf in North America.

Laurent Clerc (born Louis Laurent Marie Clerc) (26 December 1785 – 18 July 1869) was called "The Apostle of the deaf in America" and "The Father of the Deaf" by generations of American deaf people. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Hartford Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb on April 15, 1817 in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently re-named The American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to its present site. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America.

Birth

Born December 26, 1785 in La Balme-les-Grottes, département of Isère, France, a village on the northeastern edge of Lyon to Joseph-François Clerc and Marie-Élisabeth Candy in the small village of La Balme where his father was the mayor, Laurent Clerc's home was a typical bourgeois household. When he was a year old, Clerc, while momentarily unattended, fell from a chair into the hearth, suffering a blow to the head and sustaining a permanent scar on the right side of his face below his ear. Clerc's family believed his deafness and inability to smell were caused by this accident, but Clerc later wrote that he was not certain and that he may have been born deaf and without the ability to smell or taste. The facial scar was later the basis for his name sign, the "U" hand shape stroked twice downward along the right cheek. Clerc's name sign would become the best known and most recognizable name sign in American deaf history and Clerc became the most renowned deaf person in American history.