Peter Wallace Gallaudet
Encyclopedia
Peter Wallace Gallaudet, (April 21, 1756 – May 17, 1843) was a personal secretary to US President George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

 in Philadelphia. He married Jane "Jeannette" Hopkins of Hartford, Connecticut in 1787.

Gallaudet lost both parents by the age of 18 and went to live with his uncle, Elisha Gallaudet, who was the engraver of the first US coin, the 1776 "Continental Dollar."

Gallaudet enlisted as a soldier in the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

 and took part in the Battle of Trenton
Battle of Trenton
The Battle of Trenton took place on December 26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War, after General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton, New Jersey. The hazardous crossing in adverse weather made it possible for Washington to lead the main body of the...

, December 26, 1776.

After Gaullaudet's wife died in 1818, he went to work as a commission merchant. In 1824, he moved to Washington, DC to work in the Register's Office at the United States Treasury. In 1834, he organized a board of directors and received papers of incorporation to start a manual labor school and orphan asylum in Washington, DC. Money was raised for this purpose, but the money was held in reserve and the school was never built. Galludet and his friend Michael Nourse, who also worked at the Treasury Department, raised 2000 dollars by selling a booklet titled “A facsimile copy of the Accounts of General Washington’s expenses during the Revolutionary War, also a copy of a line of march proposed by him for the British army in the expedition of 1758 against Fort Du Quesne.” In 1838, a pamphlet was authorized for publication by the board of directors of the manual labor school organization which was written by Gallaudet Wallace Gallaudet titled: "A System of Education, on the Principle of Connecting Science with Useful Labor]." The main essay of the pamphlet is dated September 30, 1829 and was originally published by Gallaudet Gallaudet in circa 1829. In the essay, Gallaudet Gallaudet supports the educational philosophy of Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg
Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg
Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg was a Swiss educationist and agronomist.-Biography:He was born at Bern. His father was of patrician family, and a man of importance in his canton, and his mother was a granddaughter of the Dutch admiral Van Tromp...

, a philosophy which, he explains, was based partly on the educational philosophy of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach....

. As mentioned on page 241 of the biography of Gallaudet's son, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, written by Gallaudet's grandson, Edward Miner Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet had also become acquainted with the educational philosophy of von Fellenberg and, in 1833, visited a manual labor school in Greenfield, Massachusetts which followed von Fellenberg's philosophy.

By 1860, seventeen years after Gallaudet's death, his grandson Edward Miner Gallaudet
Edward Miner Gallaudet
Edward Miner Gallaudet , son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was a famous early educator of the deaf in Washington, DC...

 had become superintendent of a school for the deaf. Edward made arrangements with the directors of the corporation of the manual labor school that was never built, and together they approached Congress to obtain permission to dissolve the corporation and cede the funds to the school that Edward had helped establish, the Columbia School for the Deaf, which was the school which, in 1864, added a collegiate department and became Gallaudet College (1894) and then Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University
Gallaudet University is a federally-chartered university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing, located in the District of Columbia, U.S...

 (1986).

Gallaudet was the father of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, LL.D., was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the Deaf. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first institution for the education of the Deaf in North America, and he became its first principal...

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

Gallaudet was the second of six children. His siblings' names were: Edgar (1753–1790); Thomas (1758–1759); David (1760–1761); Thomas (b. 1762); and Catherine (1766–1786).

Sources

Gallaudet, Peter Wallace. 1838. A System of Education, on the Principle of Connecting Science with Useful Labor. Re-published by Order of the Trustees of Washington's Manual Labor School and Male Orphan Asylum. Washington: Printed by Peter Force.
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