Laura Bridgman
Encyclopedia
Laura Dewey Lynn Bridgman (December 21, 1829 – May 24, 1889) is known as the first deaf-blind American child to gain a significant education in the English language, fifty years before the more famous Helen Keller
. However, there are accounts of deaf-blind people communicating in tactile sign language
before this time, and the deafblind Victorine Morriseau (1789–1832) had successfully learned French as a child some years earlier.
, being the third daughter of Daniel Bridgman, a Baptist
farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and granddaughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal sense. However, her family was struck with scarlet fever
when she was two years old. The illness killed her two older sisters and brother and left her deaf, blind, and without a sense of smell or taste. Though she gradually recovered health, she remained deaf-blind, but was kindly treated and was in particular made a sort of playmate by an eccentric bachelor friend of the Bridgmans, Mr. Asa Tenney, who as soon as she could walk used to take her for rambles through the fields. As a child, she learned to sew and knit through touch, but had no language. Tenney, who apparently had some kind of expressive language disorder
, associated with Native Americans
(probably Abenaki) who used Plains Indian Sign Language
. He had begun to teach Laura to express herself using these signs when she was taken away.
In 1837, James Barrett, of Dartmouth College
, saw her and mentioned her case to Dr. Mussey, the head of the medical department, who wrote an account which attracted the attention of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe
, the director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind
at Boston. He determined to try to get the child into the Institution and to attempt to educate her; her parents assented, and in October 1837 Laura entered the school.
She was a comely child and of a sensitive and affectionate nature and was imitative insofar as she could follow the actions of others. However, she was limited in her communication to the narrower uses of touch. Her mother, preoccupied with house-work, had already ceased to be able to control her, and her father's authority was due to fear of superior force, not to reason. Howe had recently met Julia Brace
, a deaf-blind resident at the American School for the Deaf
who communicated using tactile sign
, and developed a plan to teach the young Bridgman to read and write through tactile means — something that had not been attempted previously, to his knowledge. At first he and his assistant, Lydia Hall Drew (1815–1887), used words printed with raised letters, and later they progressed to using a manual alphabet expressed through tactile sign. Eventually she received a broad education.
Dr. Howe taught Laura words before the individual letters. His first experiment consisted of pasting little paper labels upon several common articles such as keys, spoons, and knives, with the names of the articles printed in raised letters, which he got her to feel and differentiate; then he gave her the same labels by themselves, which she learned to associate with the articles they referred to, until, with the spoon or knife alone before her she could find the right label for each from a mixed heap. The next stage was to give her the component letters and teach her to combine them in the words she knew. Gradually, in this way, she learned all the alphabet and the ten digits. The whole process showed that she had human intelligence, which only required stimulation, and her own interest in learning became keener as she progressed.
Dr Howe devoted himself with the utmost patience and assiduity to her education and was rewarded by increasing success. On July 24, 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly. On June 20, 1840 she had her first arithmetic lesson, with the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated by Dr Howe as his daughter. Her case already began to interest the public, and others were brought to Dr Howe for treatment.
In 1841 Laura began to keep a journal
, in which she recorded her own day's work and thoughts. In January 1842 Charles Dickens
visited the Institution, and afterwards wrote enthusiastically in his American Notes
of Howe's success with Laura. In 1843 funds were obtained for devoting a special teacher to her, and first Miss Swift, then Miss Wight, and then Miss Paddock, were appointed; Laura by this time was learning geography and elementary astronomy. By degrees she was given religious instruction, but Dr Howe was intent upon not inculcating dogma before she had grasped the essential beliefs of Christianity and the story of the Bible.
She grew up a happy, cheerful girl, loving, optimistic, but with some inclination to irritability, receiving careful education in self-control. In 1860 her eldest sister Mary's death prompted a religious crisis, and through the influence of some of her family she was received into the Baptist church; she became more pietistic for some years after this. In 1867 she began writing compositions which she called poems; the best-known is called "Holy Home."
Heaven is holy home.
Holy Home is from ever
lasting to ever lasting.
Holy home is Summery.
Holy home shall endure
forever...
In 1872, Dr. Howe having been enabled to build some separate cottages (each under a matron) for the blind girls, Laura was moved from the larger house of the Institution into one of them, and there she continued her quiet life. The death of Howe in 1876 was a great grief to her; but before he died he had made arrangements by which she would be financially provided for in her home at the Institution for the rest of her life. She remained at the Institution, taking on household duties and teaching other pupils. In 1887 her jubilee was celebrated there, but in 1889 she was taken ill, and she died on May 24. She was buried at Dana Cemetery in Hanover, New Hampshire.
's mother, Kate Keller, read Dickens' account and was inspired to seek advice which led to her hiring a teacher and former pupil of the same school, Anne Sullivan
. Sullivan learned the manual alphabet from Bridgman which she took back to Helen, along with a doll that Bridgman had made for her.
Bridgman's case is mentioned in La Symphonie Pastorale
by André Gide
.
A Liberty ship
was named after her.
Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
. However, there are accounts of deaf-blind people communicating in tactile sign language
Tactile signing
Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people with both a sight and hearing impairment , which is based on a standard system of Deaf manual signs.-Kinds of tactile signing:...
before this time, and the deafblind Victorine Morriseau (1789–1832) had successfully learned French as a child some years earlier.
Biography
Laura Bridgman was born at HanoverHanover, New Hampshire
Hanover is a town along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 11,260 at the 2010 census. CNN and Money magazine rated Hanover the sixth best place to live in America in 2011, and the second best in 2007....
, being the third daughter of Daniel Bridgman, a Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and granddaughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal sense. However, her family was struck with scarlet fever
Scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
when she was two years old. The illness killed her two older sisters and brother and left her deaf, blind, and without a sense of smell or taste. Though she gradually recovered health, she remained deaf-blind, but was kindly treated and was in particular made a sort of playmate by an eccentric bachelor friend of the Bridgmans, Mr. Asa Tenney, who as soon as she could walk used to take her for rambles through the fields. As a child, she learned to sew and knit through touch, but had no language. Tenney, who apparently had some kind of expressive language disorder
Expressive language disorder
Expressive language disorder is a communication disorder in which there are difficulties with verbal and written expression. It is a specific language impairment characterized by an ability to use expressive spoken language that is markedly below the appropriate level for the mental age, but with a...
, associated with Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
(probably Abenaki) who used Plains Indian Sign Language
Plains Indian Sign Language
The Plains Indian sign languages are various manually coded languages used, or formerly used, by various Native Americans of the Great Plains of the United States of America and Canada...
. He had begun to teach Laura to express herself using these signs when she was taken away.
In 1837, James Barrett, of Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, saw her and mentioned her case to Dr. Mussey, the head of the medical department, who wrote an account which attracted the attention of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe
Samuel Gridley Howe
Samuel Gridley Howe was a nineteenth century United States physician, abolitionist, and an advocate of education for the blind.-Early life and education:...
, the director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind
Perkins School for the Blind
Perkins School for the Blind, located in Watertown, Massachusetts, is the oldest schools for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.-History:...
at Boston. He determined to try to get the child into the Institution and to attempt to educate her; her parents assented, and in October 1837 Laura entered the school.
She was a comely child and of a sensitive and affectionate nature and was imitative insofar as she could follow the actions of others. However, she was limited in her communication to the narrower uses of touch. Her mother, preoccupied with house-work, had already ceased to be able to control her, and her father's authority was due to fear of superior force, not to reason. Howe had recently met Julia Brace
Julia Brace
Julia Brace was a deafblind who received no special instruction until she reached adulthood.-Biography:She was born to a poor family in Hartford County, Connecticut, and became deafblind at age five from typhus fever. She gradually stopped speaking and developed a system of home sign that she used...
, a deaf-blind resident at the American School for the Deaf
American School for the Deaf
The American School for the Deaf is the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States. It was founded April 15, 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc and became a state-supported school in 1817.-History:...
who communicated using tactile sign
Tactile signing
Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people with both a sight and hearing impairment , which is based on a standard system of Deaf manual signs.-Kinds of tactile signing:...
, and developed a plan to teach the young Bridgman to read and write through tactile means — something that had not been attempted previously, to his knowledge. At first he and his assistant, Lydia Hall Drew (1815–1887), used words printed with raised letters, and later they progressed to using a manual alphabet expressed through tactile sign. Eventually she received a broad education.
Dr. Howe taught Laura words before the individual letters. His first experiment consisted of pasting little paper labels upon several common articles such as keys, spoons, and knives, with the names of the articles printed in raised letters, which he got her to feel and differentiate; then he gave her the same labels by themselves, which she learned to associate with the articles they referred to, until, with the spoon or knife alone before her she could find the right label for each from a mixed heap. The next stage was to give her the component letters and teach her to combine them in the words she knew. Gradually, in this way, she learned all the alphabet and the ten digits. The whole process showed that she had human intelligence, which only required stimulation, and her own interest in learning became keener as she progressed.
Dr Howe devoted himself with the utmost patience and assiduity to her education and was rewarded by increasing success. On July 24, 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly. On June 20, 1840 she had her first arithmetic lesson, with the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated by Dr Howe as his daughter. Her case already began to interest the public, and others were brought to Dr Howe for treatment.
In 1841 Laura began to keep a journal
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
, in which she recorded her own day's work and thoughts. In January 1842 Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
visited the Institution, and afterwards wrote enthusiastically in his American Notes
American Notes
American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America from January to June, 1842. While there he acted as a critical observer of these societies almost as if returning a status report on their progress...
of Howe's success with Laura. In 1843 funds were obtained for devoting a special teacher to her, and first Miss Swift, then Miss Wight, and then Miss Paddock, were appointed; Laura by this time was learning geography and elementary astronomy. By degrees she was given religious instruction, but Dr Howe was intent upon not inculcating dogma before she had grasped the essential beliefs of Christianity and the story of the Bible.
She grew up a happy, cheerful girl, loving, optimistic, but with some inclination to irritability, receiving careful education in self-control. In 1860 her eldest sister Mary's death prompted a religious crisis, and through the influence of some of her family she was received into the Baptist church; she became more pietistic for some years after this. In 1867 she began writing compositions which she called poems; the best-known is called "Holy Home."
Heaven is holy home.
Holy Home is from ever
lasting to ever lasting.
Holy home is Summery.
Holy home shall endure
forever...
In 1872, Dr. Howe having been enabled to build some separate cottages (each under a matron) for the blind girls, Laura was moved from the larger house of the Institution into one of them, and there she continued her quiet life. The death of Howe in 1876 was a great grief to her; but before he died he had made arrangements by which she would be financially provided for in her home at the Institution for the rest of her life. She remained at the Institution, taking on household duties and teaching other pupils. In 1887 her jubilee was celebrated there, but in 1889 she was taken ill, and she died on May 24. She was buried at Dana Cemetery in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Legacy
Her name became familiar as an example of the education of a deaf-blind person. Helen KellerHelen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
's mother, Kate Keller, read Dickens' account and was inspired to seek advice which led to her hiring a teacher and former pupil of the same school, Anne Sullivan
Anne Sullivan
Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Sullivan Macy , also known as Annie Sullivan, was an American teacher best known as the instructor and companion of Helen Keller.-Early life:Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts...
. Sullivan learned the manual alphabet from Bridgman which she took back to Helen, along with a doll that Bridgman had made for her.
Bridgman's case is mentioned in La Symphonie Pastorale
La Symphonie Pastorale
La Symphonie Pastorale is a French novel written by André Gide published in 1919. The work was made into a film in 1946 by Jean Delannoy, with Michèle Morgan in the principal role as Gertrude.-Plot:...
by André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
.
A Liberty ship
Liberty ship
Liberty ships were cargo ships built in the United States during World War II. Though British in conception, they were adapted by the U.S. as they were cheap and quick to build, and came to symbolize U.S. wartime industrial output. Based on vessels ordered by Britain to replace ships torpedoed by...
was named after her.
External links
- Laura Dewey Bridgman collection at The Leonard Axe Library, Pittsburg State UniversityPittsburg State UniversityPittsburg State University, also called Pitt State or PSU, is a public university with approximately 7,100 students located in Pittsburg, Kansas, United States. A large percentage of the student population consists of residents within the Pittsburg region; the gender proportion is relatively equal...
. - Laura Bridgman and the music taken from "Wilhelm JerusalemWilhelm JerusalemWilhelm Jerusalem was an Austrian Jewish philosopher and pedagogue....
- Helen KellerHelen KellerHelen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
:'Letters'" Dokumentary Theatre by Herbert GantschacherHerbert GantschacherHerbert Gantschacher is an Austrian director and producer and writer.- Education :...
:http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe4zzc_laura-bridgman_creation - [Laura E. Richards: Laura Bridgman: The Story of an Opened Door http://library.du.ac.in/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/12411/Laura%20bridgman%20the%20story%20of%20an%20opened%20door%20%281928%29.pdf?sequence=1]