The Structure and Geography of the ASL Signing Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Hartford Gatherings of 1850 and 1854

Justin Power; Richard P. Meier

doi:10.25189/2675-4916.2025.v6.n1.id790

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The Structure and Geography of the ASL Signing Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Hartford Gatherings of 1850 and 1854

Justin Power The University of Texas at Austin https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5695-5357
Richard P. Meier The University of Texas at Austin https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0852-1954

Resumo

In the early decades of the 19th century, the deaf population in the eastern US and Canada was distributed across a vast area. After the 1817 founding of the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, CT and the subsequent establishment of schools for the deaf in New York City (NYSD), Philadelphia, and many other US states, hundreds of deaf students called these schools home for several years. After leaving school, the early American Deaf community faced a challenge: How would the community maintain its social and linguistic ties across a vast geographical area once community members had dispersed to their hometowns? In this paper we analyze the attendance registries of two large gatherings of deaf individuals in Hartford in the years 1850 and 1854. These were among the largest and earliest known gatherings of deaf adults. The demographic data included in these registries open a window onto the evolving American Deaf community of the mid-19th century. Our analyses of the attendees’ school affiliations, ages, and marital status show that the signing community that had taken root among students at schools in Hartford and New York persisted among the adult graduates of those schools in towns across the northeastern US. We compare the places of residence of ASD and NYSD alumni in 1850 and 1854 to their hometowns when they first enrolled at school. Our comparisons suggest the mid-19th-century signing community had become more urban; it was centered to a greater extent in populous cities such as New York, Boston, and Hartford than had been true when the attendees had enrolled in school. We consider how the geography of deafness in the 19th century might inform our understanding of the sources of regional variation in ASL. We also consider how early cross-regional interactions may have inhibited such regional variation.

Lay Summary

We compared historical sources of information about the American Deaf community to understand how that community changed during the first half of the 19th century. One source was the records of students admitted to deaf schools between 1817 and 1854. We focused on students at the first three deaf schools in the U.S.—those in Hartford, New York City, and Philadelphia. The other source was the guestbooks of gatherings of deaf individuals in 1850 and 1854; these two gatherings took place in Hartford. We matched the deaf individuals who attended those gatherings to their earlier student records to see what had happened in their lives—for example, whether they had married, found a job, or moved to a new city. We discovered that many individuals had married other alumni of deaf schools. We also discovered that the community had generally become more urban, located in large cities like New York and Boston. This research sheds light on the history of the American Deaf community. It also helps us understand how regional communities centered around deaf schools developed into a national community that now shares a common language, American Sign Language.

Introduction

Quantifiable information about the 19th-century American Deaf community is rich and detailed, whereas linguistic data about American Sign Language (ASL) in the 19th century are sparse (Power & Meier 2025). Signed languages are unwritten languages, though notation systems have been proposed since the early 1960s (Stokoe 1960; Stokoe et al. 1965). This means that for sign languages such as ASL, Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras), Langue des signes française (LSF), or British Sign Language (BSL) there are few linguistic records that preceded the invention of film; however, see Pélissier (1856) and Lambert (1865) for early records of LSF; see Hutton (1855), published in Halifax, NS; and see Okrouhlíková (2021), who examined depictions of signs published in Vienna by Franz Herrmann Czech in 1836. Pictorial evidence of early manual alphabets is relatively rich, at minimum stretching back to the late 16th century, and has allowed for computational phylogenetic work on those systems (Power et al. 2020). Photographic evidence of ASL signs from the early 20th century, when paired with 19th-century dictionaries of LSF signs, supports etymological research on the origins of ASL signs (Supalla & Clark 2015; Shaw & Delaporte 2015). The same is true for Libras, which like ASL is historically linked to LSF (Campello 2020).

Even without linguistic evidence of earlier sign forms, linguists have used the tools of historical linguistics to make inferences about the histories and relationships of sign languages. The comparative method, when applied to the vocabularies of modern sign languages from, for example, the BSL- or LSF-influenced sign languages, may allow the reconstruction of earlier forms from which the modern signs of these languages developed. However, it is not clear that modern sign languages such as ASL or Libras should be considered, in the strictest sense, daughter languages of 19th-century LSF (Power 2022). Rather, the issue of how to conceptualize the development of such languages and their relationships to one another remains open to debate (Power & Meier 2023; Law et al., in press; Reagan 2021; Johnston 2003; Guerra Currie et al. 2002).

In contrast to the limited linguistic data available from the 19th century, we have rich demographic data on the communities of deaf people who used many of these sign languages. Schools for the deaf in the United States, and in many other countries,[1] kept careful enrollment records and published annual reports in which they named the students in attendance and provided a variety of other identifying information that would now be considered privileged in the US (e.g., American School for the Deaf 1887; Peet 1854; Manchester School for the Deaf 1838). Throughout much of the 19th century, decennial US federal censuses enumerated all deaf persons and reported their name, sex, age, and place of residence. Genealogical records and vital records of births, marriages, and deaths are now readily accessible online. By cross-referencing these data sources, a picture can be drawn of the communities in which ASL arose, a picture of much greater granularity than is true of the emergence of any spoken language of which we are aware (cf., e.g., Trudgill et al. 2000 on New Zealand English). Scholars of creole languages have found extensive demographic data on the communities in which those languages developed (e.g., Arends 2008). But those data are not as detailed as the demographic data available on 19th-century deaf populations in the US and elsewhere.

Analyses of these demographic data can enrich our understanding of signing communities, such as the American Deaf community, and of the linguistic history of ASL. In a previous paper (Power & Meier 2023), we analyzed 1700 attendance records from the first enduring school for the deaf in the US, the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, CT. Our analyses demonstrate that young children at ASD could not have driven the emergence of ASL in the way that young children at the Managua School apparently drove the emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language (Senghas & Coppola 2001). The reason is simple: Children below age 8 were almost entirely absent from ASD in the period we examined, the school’s first 50 years, 1817 to 1867. However, we presented evidence that young children could have played an important role in elaborating ASL at home, given the likely input they received there from parents or older siblings who had attended ASD. We also mapped the community of deaf individuals who used the sign language that emerged at ASD. Maps of the hometowns of the students who attended ASD reveal evidence for why ASL spans both the US and much of Canada. ASD drew students not only from many states in the US—students traveled to Hartford from Texas, southern Georgia, and even California—but also from the eastern provinces of Canada. Moreover, former ASD students would in some cases staff provincial schools for the deaf (Edwards 2012).

Power & Meier (2024) is a detailed historical demography of the deaf population on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, which lies off the coast of southern Massachusetts. Some scholars have argued that the sign language of that community, Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL), was a crucial contributor to the early history of ASL (Groce 1985; Lane et al. 2000). However, our analyses of records of the deaf population on Martha’s Vineyard suggest that MVSL was much younger than previously thought, dating only to 1785 rather than to 1692 (or even earlier in the County of Kent in England), as had been previously argued (Groce 1985). We further suggested that the language may have developed independently for only 40 years. Beginning in 1825, MVSL came into extensive contact with the early form of ASL that was then emerging in Hartford; it was in 1825 that the first three students, all women, journeyed from Martha’s Vineyard to enroll at ASD. Rather than MVSL exerting significant influence on the emergence of ASL, it seems more likely, based on our analyses, that contact with ASL significantly impacted MVSL. For example, marriages between alumni of ASD brought deaf women to the island who would only have known ASL. The conclusions we draw from our demographic analyses are consistent with a linguistic analysis of the MVSL vocabulary that was remembered in the late 20th century by its last signers, all of whom were hearing (Orfila 2024). Analyses of their videorecorded signs provides significant evidence of contact with ASL and no strong evidence of vocabulary that could have come from a sign language in use in England, as had been suggested (Groce 1985; Nash 2015; Bahan & Nash 1995).

In this paper we report another source of demographic data on the 19th-century American Deaf community. Specifically, we analyze the attendance registries of two large gatherings of deaf individuals in Hartford in the years 1850 and 1854. These were among the largest and earliest known gatherings of deaf adults. Beginning in 1834, part of the deaf community in Paris held annual banquets to celebrate the founder of deaf education in France, the Abbé de l'Epée (Mottez 1993). Based on contemporaneous accounts of the meetings (e.g., Anonymous 1849, cited in Mottez 1993), Hedberg & Lane (2020) reported that 54 deaf men attended the first banquet. Deaf women were excluded from attending the meetings for nearly 50 years until 1883 (Mottez 1993). Compared to the banquets in Paris, the Hartford gatherings analyzed here were larger (deaf attendees in 1850: 210; 1854: 369) and they included deaf women (1850: 84; 1854: 152). Therefore, the Hartford gatherings contribute not just to our understanding of the development of the American Deaf community but also to the broader history of the world’s deaf communities.

When compared to the demographic data found in earlier student enrollment records, the Hartford gatherings in the mid-19th century provide a window onto the development of the American Deaf community. Most attendees were former ASD students, but the gatherings also attracted numerous alumni from the New York School for the Deaf (NYSD), which opened its doors in New York City just one year after the founding of ASD (Edwards 2012). Our analyses of the attendees’ school affiliations, ages, and marital status show that the signing community that had initially taken root among students at schools in Hartford and New York persisted among adult graduates of those schools in towns across the northeastern US. We compare the places of residence of ASD and NYSD alumni in 1850 and 1854 to their hometowns when they first enrolled at school. Our comparisons suggest that the mid-19th-century signing community had become more urban; it was centered to a greater extent in populous cities such as New York, Boston, and Hartford than had been true when these individuals had enrolled in school. In our conclusions, we consider how the geography of the 19th-century Deaf community might inform our understanding of the sources of regional variation in ASL. We also consider how early cross-regional interactions may have inhibited such regional variation.

1. Data and methods

Here we describe the sources of our data set, the registries of deaf gatherings in 1850 and 1854, as well as the methods we used to analyze these data.

1.1. Data

The attendance registries for four large gatherings of deaf individuals (in 1850, 1854, 1860, and 1866) can be found in the Museum Archives of ASD in Hartford; these records were transcribed in a Word document by Jean Linderman, the museum’s archivist. We have had access to both the original registries and the transcribed document.[1] The first two gatherings were open to both deaf and hearing attendees from across the US and even Europe. The second two gatherings were conventions of a deaf organization, the New England Gallaudet Association, and were only open to its members.

We focus on the first two gatherings, which took place in Hartford on 26 September 1850 and 6 September 1854.[2] The registry for the 1850 gathering is titled “Names of Persons present at the Presentation of the Silver Pitchers to Messrs Gallaudet & Clerc”. It includes columns recording the name, age, residence, “business”, and “family” of attendees. The registry for the 1854 gathering is titled “Names of persons present at the raising of the Monument to the memory of Rev T. H. Gallaudet”. It is organized in a way similar to the 1850 registry, including columns for name, age, residence, “occupation”, and “social relations”. The family column in 1850 and the social relations column in 1854 typically include information about the attendees’ marital status, number of children, and whether their spouses and children were deaf or hearing. In both registries, the handwriting differs from entry to entry; hence each attendee to the gathering likely recorded their own attendance and perhaps that of any others in their party. However, in some cases missing information may have been included by others: For example, the word “unknown” was entered in the family column for Dudley Peet in 1850.

Despite such gaps, the information in both registries is nearly complete. In the 1850 registry, there are 225 entries for 210 deaf and 15 hearing attendees. Only one surname is illegible,[3] and only seven attendees did not record their age. The information about places of residence in 1850 is complete, but the business and family columns are incomplete: 59 entries do not include information about business, and two do not include information about family. In 1854, the names of all 401 attendees are legible, but three attendees did not record their ages. There are 84 gaps in the occupation column, and 13 in the social relations column. The missing family or social relations information is readily inferable based on context in the registry, on information in databases that we have compiled about 19th-century deaf individuals (see Power & Meier 2023), or on historical records available online or in repositories of genealogical records, such as Ancestry, which includes scans of Fay’s (1898) surveys of deaf individuals, their marriages, and their families.

1.2. Methods

We now explain how we created a database of attendees at the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. We also demonstrate our approach to making inferences about gaps in the data. As noted, all but one of the names in the registries were legible; we were therefore able to identify nearly all attendees based on existing records about 19th-century deaf individuals. In Power & Meier (2023), we created a database of the 1700 students who attended ASD during the school’s first 50 years, 1817–1867.[1] That database allowed us to identify all attendees at the 1850 and 1854 gatherings who were ASD alumni. Because our ASD student database includes abundant information about these individuals, we were able to fill gaps in the attendance registries or to supplement the registries with more precise information. For example, the registries report ages as integers, but the database includes exact birthdates for most individuals. Similarly, the registries record only brief notes about attendees’ families, but our database includes information about marriages and deaf family members.

We have begun to compile similar databases of students from NYSD and from the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD). These databases are based on records starting from the year of each school’s founding (NYSD: 1818; PSD: 1820) and running through 1867.[1] The information about NYSD students is mainly based on the school’s annual reports, which do not provide exact birthdates. Nevertheless, using information in the annual reports—namely, age at enrollment and year of enrollment—we were able to infer students’ birth years. That information was used to verify the ages reported in the registries of the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. The NYSD annual reports provide information about each student’s year of enrollment and length of study in years. However, the reports do not provide exact dates of graduation (or disenrollment). We inferred the graduation dates based on the students’ year of enrollment and length of study. For PSD students, we had access to detailed admissions records that include birthdates, admission dates, and dates of leaving. Taken together with the ASD database, these two new databases allowed us to identify all attendees at the 1850 and 1854 gatherings who were alumni of ASD, NYSD, and PSD.

We have less complete information about students who attended other early US schools for the deaf. For any individuals not included in the ASD, NYSD, or PSD databases, we searched the annual reports of schools for the deaf and Fay’s (1898) survey records on Ancestry. We were unable to identify 14 individuals who were likely deaf, one from the 1850 gathering and 13 from the 1854 gathering.

2. Analysis

In this section, we analyze the attendance registries of the 1850 and 1854 gatherings in Hartford. We consider a variety of the attendees’ characteristics, such as age, gender, education, and place of residence. We also consider whether the attendees were deaf or hearing, whether they were married or single, and, if deaf and married, whether their spouse was also deaf. Finally, we track the movements of former ASD and NYSD students from their hometowns reported when they first enrolled at school to their later residences reported in the registries.

2.1. The 1850 gathering in honor of Clerc and Gallaudet

By 1850, ASD had been operating as a school for 33 years since its opening in April 1817. In those 33 years, 863 deaf students finished their courses of study, which averaged roughly four years (Power & Meier 2023). Students who attended the school in this period constituted a large share of the first members of the signing community in which ASL arose. The school’s founders and first two teachers, Laurent Clerc and Thomas H. Gallaudet, were prominent figures in 19th-century America and were widely revered by deaf Americans. Clerc in particular, as a deaf Frenchman who had studied and taught at the Paris National Institute for the Deaf, was held up as “the Apostle to the Deaf-Mutes of the New World” (Fay 1874).

Following its six-week summer vacation, ASD began the 1850–51 academic year on 19 September 1850. Just one week later, some 200 individuals—mostly former students of schools for the deaf—gathered at ASD in Hartford. According to ASD’s (1851: 12) annual report, they did so “to revisit the scenes of their early life, to meet each other and their former teachers and benefactors still connected with the Asylum [i.e., ASD], but primarily and chiefly, to shew (sic) their affectionate respect and gratitude to their first teachers, Messrs. Gallaudet and Clerc”. Clerc was still a teacher at ASD in 1850; he would continue there until his retirement in 1858. Gallaudet had long since retired from the school. According to the attendance registry, he was then working in Hartford as a chaplain in the “Connecticut Retreat for the Insane”. At the gathering, Clerc and Gallaudet were presented with engraved silver pitchers and salvers that were purchased by the “Deaf Mutes of New England”, who had raised some $600 for these gifts (Rae 1850: 43).

Deaf attendees’ gender and alma mater. The names of 225 attendees are recorded in the 1850 registry. As suggested in ASD’s annual report, most attendees were deaf (210, 93.3%; 84f, 126m). The disparity in female (40.6%) versus male (59.4%) attendees may, in part, have reflected disparities in deaf school attendance during this period (Power & Meier 2023). Considering only those students who had graduated from ASD by September 1850, 44.6% (385/863) were female. The lower observed proportion of female attendees at the 1850 gathering did not significantly differ from the expected proportion given the enrollment of female students at ASD: X²(1, 210) = 1.93, p = .17, NS.

Table 1 breaks down the deaf attendees by gender and by the deaf school(s) they attended. Most were former ASD students (170, 81.0%). Thirty-one attendees were graduates of NYSD. Four were alumni of both ASD and NYSD. One female attendee was an alumna of the Central Institute in Canajoharie, NY, and one male student had spent time at both NYSD and the Central Institute. Other attendees in 1850 were alumni of PSD (2m), of the Virginia Institution (1m, also attended ASD), and of a deaf school in Columbia, SC (1m).

Three individuals were immigrants to the US, including Laurent Clerc who had attended the Paris Institute (Edwards 2012). Edward Doerr, a lithographer born in Hanover, Germany (Finlay 2010: 111), resided in Hartford in 1850; it is unclear whether he had attended a school for the deaf in Germany. Margaret (Harrington) Swett of Ireland lived in Henniker, NH; she had married an ASD graduate, Thomas Swett. Six deaf attendees apparently had never attended a school for the deaf—though Samuel Porter, who became deaf in his twenties, had graduated from Yale and later taught at ASD and NYSD (Gallaudet 1901). Dyer Bailey of Norwich, CT, who attended the 1850 gathering despite never attending a school for the deaf, was likely introduced to the Deaf community through his two older sisters, who were both ASD alumni (Harriet 1817–1819 and Maria 1817–1824).

The 1850 gathering resembled an ASD school reunion. As noted above, 863 students had finished their studies at ASD by September 1850; at least 86 of these individuals had died.[1] Thus, the proportion of living former ASD students who attended the 1850 gathering was at the minimum 21.5% (167/777); three attendees had not yet finished their studies at ASD. On average, 14.3 years (SD = 8.2, median = 14.4) had elapsed between the date an attendee finished their studies at ASD and the 1850 gathering. Some attendees had finished their studies decades prior: 24.6% (41/167) had graduated more than 20 years before the event; and five had left ASD more than 30 years prior to the gathering. Evidently, many ASD graduates had remained in contact, over many years, with one another and with their alma mater.

As noted, 14.8% (31/210) of the deaf attendees had attended NYSD; 23 (11f, 12m) had finished their studies at the school and another eight (3f, 5m) were still enrolled as students. By September 1850, an estimated 716 (330f, 386m) students had graduated from NYSD; of these, at least 94 (48f, 46m) had died. Thus, the 23 attendees who were alumni of NYSD represented approximately 3.7% (23/622) of all living NYSD graduates. On average, the NYSD alumni had graduated 11.4 years (SD = 5.2, median = 13.0) before the 1850 gathering in Hartford. Among the alumni attendees from NYSD, four had become employees of the school: Three men were instructors, and one woman was an assistant matron. And, among the student attendees was Henry Rider, who would later be an important figure in the American Deaf world. In 1865, he became the first president of the Empire State (i.e., New York State) Deaf-Mute Association (Edwards 2012). In 1875, he started the weekly Deaf Mutes Journal.[1] But, in 1850, he was an 18-year-old student who would not graduate for another five years.

By 1850, several deaf individuals had ties to both ASD and NYSD. We have seen that four attendees were alumni of both schools. Other attendees linked the schools through their employment as instructors. Thomas Gallaudet, the hearing son of Thomas H. Gallaudet, grew up in Hartford. Because his mother was a former ASD student, he likely acquired early ASL from his birth in 1822. He became an instructor at NYSD in 1843; two years later, he married a former NYSD student, Elizabeth Budd (NYSD 1834–43). Fisher Spofford, who attended ASD from 1819 to 1826, later became an instructor at ASD (1828–1833) and then at NYSD (1844–1851; Patterson 1877). James Wheeler attended both NYSD (1835–1838) and ASD (1842–1844), as well as PSD and the Ohio School for the Deaf. By the 1850 gathering, Wheeler was an instructor at ASD. Thus, both deaf and hearing individuals served as bridges connecting the signing communities in Hartford, New York, and elsewhere.

Deaf attendees’ ages. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the deaf attendees’ ages. Their average age was 33.7 years (SD = 10.5, median = 33.4). Most deaf attendees at the gathering (69.4%, 145/209) were between ages 20 and 40.[1] Only 16 were under age 20; the two youngest were 14. John Chandler of Mexico, NY was enrolled as a student at NYSD in 1850. Hart Chamberlayne of Richmond, VA had evidently arrived in Hartford before the start of his first, and only, year at ASD (September 1850 to August 1851). Later in 1851, Hart enrolled at NYSD. Only 18 attendees were over age 50, and just four were older than 60. The oldest deaf attendee was Lucy Backus (age 73), who was among the earliest students to enroll at ASD, having done so at age 40 only three weeks after the school’s founding in 1817.

On average, former ASD students (M = 34.2 years, SD = 9.9, median = 33.9) who attended the 1850 gathering were 7.9 years older than former NYSD students (M = 26.3 years, SD = 6.3, median = 25.7). The mean age of ASD attendees mirrored the average age of all living ASD students who had left that school by September 1850: 33.9 years (n = 777, SD = 10.9, median = 34.0). The age disparity between alumni of ASD and NYSD was partly due to the larger proportion of NYSD attendees who were still enrolled as students at the time of the gathering (NYSD: 8/31; ASD: 3/170). The eight NYSD students in attendance were 17.9 years old on average (SD = 2.9, median = 17), whereas the mean age of the 23 NYSD graduates was 28.5 (SD = 5.0, median = 29).

Marital status of deaf attendees. Marriage between deaf individuals was a persistent concern of many outsiders to the Deaf community in the 19th century, who saw such marriages as barriers to the integration of deaf people into hearing society (e.g., Bell, 1884). From another perspective, however, early marriages among deaf Americans are indicators of the formation and growth of the American Deaf community, within which long-term connections were forged among deaf individuals whose hometowns were often separated by dozens or even hundreds of miles. In total, 91 deaf attendees had married by September 1850; four of these 91 had been widowed. Unlike Elizabeth Budd, who had married Thomas Gallaudet in 1845, most married deaf attendees had a deaf spouse. Of the 88 deaf attendees whose spouse’s hearing status is known to us, 78.4% (69/88: 29f, 40m) had married a deaf individual; the hearing status of three spouses is unknown. Most deaf attendees (56.7%, 119/210: 46f, 73m) had not married by September 1850. However, 11 unwed attendees (4f, 7m) married after 1850 and attended the 1854 gathering; see below.

Most marriages among deaf individuals united graduates of the same school. Of the 69 deaf-deaf marriages represented at the 1850 gathering, 82.6% (57/69) included two former ASD students; one additional marriage was between Clerc and Eliza Boardman, a former ASD student. Four marriages united deaf individuals from various combinations of schools: ASD and the Virginia Institute, ASD and the Central Institute in Canajoharie, NY; NYSD and the Central Institute; and NYSD and PSD. One former ASD student married a deaf individual who never attended a school for the deaf. Twenty-seven deaf-deaf couples attended the reunion together, while 15 partners in such marriages (2f, 13m, including 2 widowers) attended alone.

Nineteen deaf attendees had married a hearing spouse. In addition to Budd’s marriage to Gallaudet, two other marriages united deaf students and hearing faculty. Budd’s mother-in-law was Sophia (Fowler) Gallaudet, a former ASD student who married Thomas H. Gallaudet in 1821. Sarah (Wilcox) Ayres attended ASD (1834–1839) and married Jared Ayres in 1840; Ayres was an instructor at ASD from 1835 to 1866.

Hearing attendees. Most hearing attendees (12/15) were current (11) or former (1) faculty at a US school for the deaf: Nine were connected with ASD and three with NYSD. Henry Hirzel, director of the Institution for the Blind in Lausanne, Switzerland, was evidently in the US on a tour of educational institutions (New York School for the Deaf, 1850). The other two hearing individuals in attendance were family members of faculty.

Summary. The 1850 gathering had the character of an ASD reunion. Hosted in Hartford and held in honor of two highly regarded ASD faculty members, this gathering mainly attracted deaf individuals, particularly former ASD students: 75.6% of all attendees (170/225) had either finished their studies there or would soon do so. Current and former students of NYSD (31 individuals) were also well represented. For many former ASD students, the gathering likely meant a first return to ASD after many years; on average, 14.3 years had elapsed between the end of a student’s studies and the 1850 gathering. During this post-graduation period, many former ASD students married; 78 had done so by September 1850. Most of these (62) had married another deaf individual. And, 22 ASD-ASD couples attended the gathering together.

2.2. The gathering to commemorate Gallaudet

The 1854 gathering was held on 6 September to celebrate “the completion of the monument erected... to the memory of the late Mr. Gallaudet” (American School for the Deaf 1855: 13). Thomas H. Gallaudet had passed away three years earlier in September 1851. The Gallaudet Monument Association, led by Laurent Clerc and consisting entirely of deaf members, raised funds for the design and completion of the monument, for which “not a cent” was accepted “from the pocket of any other than a deaf mute” (American School for the Deaf 1855: 40). The 1854 gathering was again hosted at ASD in Hartford, this time during the school’s summer vacation (3 August 1854 to 20 September 1854). The event’s timing was perhaps driven by the need for space; some 401 guests attended.

Deaf attendees’ gender and alma mater. Like the earlier gathering, the 1854 event was largely a meeting of deaf individuals. Of the 401 attendees, 92.3% (370/401; 152f, 218m) are known to have been deaf; we do not know the hearing status of 13 individuals (5f, 8m), but, given the overall demographics of the group in attendance, it is likely that many, if not all, were deaf. Just 18 attendees were hearing. More than a third of deaf attendees at the 1854 gathering had also attended in 1850 (36.8%, 136/370; 52f, 84m). Most of these two-time attendees were former ASD students (84.6%, 115/136), but 16 were NYSD alumni. Just four hearing individuals attended both gatherings, all were either instructors at a deaf school or an instructor’s spouse. The disparity between female and male attendees in 1854 (41.1% vs. 58.9%) was similar to the disparity in 1850 (40.6% vs. 59.4%).

Table 2 breaks down the deaf attendees in 1854 by gender and alma mater. Most attendees were former ASD students (75.4%, 279/370); one female student was an alumna of both ASD and NYSD. The proportion of deaf attendees who were ASD alumni was slightly down compared to the 1850 gathering, when 81.0% were ASD graduates. Like the earlier meeting in 1850, the 1854 gathering attracted a large proportion of living ASD graduates. By 6 September 1854, exactly 1,012 students had finished their studies at ASD, and at least 109 of these former students had died. Thus, at least 30.8% (279/903) of ASD graduates who were still alive in September 1854 attended the 1854 gathering. On average, these students had finished their studies at ASD 14.9 years (SD = 9.4, median = 14.4) before the 1854 gathering, and 15 had done so more than 30 years prior.

In addition to the ASD alumni, deaf schools in New York were well represented at the 1854 gathering: There were 61 NYSD alumni in attendance, 54 of whom had attended only NYSD. Five individuals (2f, 3m) had been enrolled at both NYSD and the Central Institute in Canajoharie, NY, and one male attendee was an alum of only the Central Institute. The proportion of deaf attendees who were alumni of NYSD was higher in 1854 than in 1850 (16.5% vs. 14.8%). Taken together, former students of ASD and NYSD represented 91.6% (339/370) of deaf attendees at the 1854 gathering.

Note. The table double counts seven students who attended more than one school. For example, Mary (Rose) Totten attended both ASD and NYSD. She is counted in the “Female” column for both schools.

Graduates of PSD, although only a small proportion of the overall number of deaf attendees, were better represented in 1854 than in 1850 (3.0% vs. 1.0%, 11 attendees vs. 2). Only two alumni of PSD attended both gatherings, John Carlin and Thomas Jefferson Trist. Carlin was a student at the school from 1821 to 1825. He later became an artist and poet and was an important figure in the early Deaf community: He published articles in the American Annals of the Deaf beginning in the 1840s, helped raise funds for the first deaf church in the US, St. Ann’s in New York, and created a bas-relief for the monument to Gallaudet that was raised at the 1854 gathering (Krentz 2000). Thomas Jefferson Trist, who attended both PSD and NYSD (1852–1855), later taught at the school in Philadelphia for 35 years (1855–1890; Fay 1893).

Not all deaf attendees were graduates of US schools for the deaf. In addition to Clerc, who was present at both gatherings, four attendees (1f, 3m) in 1854 were graduates of schools for the deaf outside the US. Adam Acheson was an alum of the school in Manchester, England, and his brother John Acheson, who was 16 years older, had been enrolled at the school in Dublin. The Acheson siblings lived in Randolph, MA. Adam would later marry a graduate of ASD, Catherine Marsh. Thomas Coulter of Philadelphia was a graduate of the school in Yorkshire, England. And, Jane Fleming, who in 1854 resided in Waterbury, CT, had studied in Edinburgh. All four of these individuals were unmarried in 1854.

Thirteen deaf attendees apparently never attended a school for the deaf. Three had married ASD alumni. Thomas Daggett of Providence, RI married Frances Streeter (ASD 1825–1831) in 1839 and attended both the 1850 and 1854 gatherings together with her. Caroline Danforth of Bristol, NH married George Webster (ASD 1833–1837) in 1841; and Mary Flint of Boston married James Messer (ASD 1840–1846) in 1850. The Websters and Messers attended the 1854 gathering as couples. Other deaf attendees who themselves never enrolled at a school for the deaf had deaf relatives who had done so. For example, Ruby Mayhew of Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard attended the 1854 gathering together with her sister Lovey. Although Ruby never attended a school for the deaf, Lovey attended ASD from 1825 to 1831, and the women’s brother Alfred did so from 1827 to 1830 (Power & Meier 2024). Josiah Smith and Nancy Pressey married in 1841. Although neither had ever attended a deaf school, Josiah and Nancy both attended the 1854 gathering. They were from Henniker, NH, where a small group of deaf individuals lived, including some who had attended ASD (Lane, Pillard, & French 2000). Josiah and Nancy likely learned about the Deaf community in New England via their ASD alumni neighbors.

Deaf attendees’ ages. On average, deaf attendees in 1854 were 33.7 years old (SD = 10.7, median = 32.7), approximately the same as in 1850. Figure 2 shows the distribution of their ages. One-third of the deaf attendees were in their twenties (122/370), and more than a quarter were in their thirties (26.8%, 99/370). At the lower and upper ends of the distribution, 35 deaf attendees were under age 20 (9.5%), and 114 were over age 40 (30.8%).

Apart from Laurent Clerc, who was 68 in September 1854, Sophia (Fowler) Gallaudet (ASD, 1817–1819), the wife of the deceased Thomas H. Gallaudet, was the oldest deaf attendee at the gathering who had attended an American school for the deaf; she was 64. The youngest deaf attendee was Mary Hildreth (ASD 1847–1853), who had turned 16 on the 2^nd of September, just four days before the gathering took place. Mary’s future husband, another relatively recent graduate of ASD named Varnum Wright (ASD 1844–1850), was also in attendance. Mary and Varnum were both from Westford, MA, but at the time of the 1854 gathering, they resided in Lowell, MA. They had likely moved to Lowell to work in the textile industry that boomed there in the mid-19th-century (Dublin 1979). The two would marry on Mary’s birthday three years later in nearby Haverhill.

Comparison of deaf attendees’ ages at the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. In 1850 more than two-thirds of attendees (69.4%) were in the 20–40 age bracket, whereas in 1854 deaf attendees were distributed more evenly across age ranges, with 59.7% in the 20–40 bracket; see Table 3. Nearly a third of deaf attendees (30.8%) were over age 40 in 1854, whereas that group represented just 23% of 1850 attendees. One reason for this change in age distribution from 1850 to 1854 was the group of 136 individuals who attended both gatherings. Obviously, they were four years older in 1854 (M = 37.1, SD = 9.9) than in 1850 (M = 33.1, SD = 9.9).

As in 1850, ASD alumni (M = 34.6 years, SD = 10.7, median = 34.3) were older on average than NYSD alumni (M = 28.5 years, SD = 7.4, median = 28.7). However, while the mean ages of attendees from ASD were roughly similar in 1850 and 1854 (34.2 and 34.6, respectively), the mean age of the NYSD alumni was two years higher in 1854 (28.5) than in 1850 (26.3). This increase is partly due to a lower proportion of NYSD students among the NYSD-affiliated attendees (i.e., enrolled students and graduates) in 1854; the percentage of NYSD attendees who were students was 19.7% (12/61) in 1854 as compared to 25.8% (8/31) in 1850. The higher number of NYSD graduates who attended the 1854 gathering may indicate increased integration of the Hartford- and New York-based signing communities. Presumably, after these graduates left NYSD, returned to their hometowns, and found regular employment, it would have required greater effort for them to remain connected to the wider Deaf community. Their attendance at the 1854 Hartford gathering suggests their tight connection to that wider Deaf world.

Marital status of deaf attendees. Most deaf attendees in 1854 were unmarried (56.5%, 209/370; 81f, 128m). Among the 161 deaf attendees (71f, 90m) who had married by 1854, 12 (8f, 4m) had lost a spouse, including one woman who had lost two spouses and another woman who had divorced. Most married deaf attendees had a deaf spouse (80.7%, 130/161; 57f, 73m); and, most deaf attendees with a deaf spouse (119/130) had attended a school for the deaf and later married another graduate of a deaf school.

Many deaf couples attended the gathering together: 48 couples were represented among the 130 deaf attendees with deaf spouses. These 130 attendees had entered into 83 unique marriages; this figure includes both marriages of Julia Ann Hoffman (NYSD 1828–1836), who had twice been widowed by 1854. Table 4 represents these 83 marriages as intersecting rows and columns. Inspection of the table reveals that two-thirds of these marriages (56/83) united graduates of ASD. In addition, seven marriages between graduates of NYSD were represented at the gathering, as were 10 other marriages which united graduates of American schools for the deaf.

Note. Frances Hammond and Mary E. Rose each attended ASD and then NYSD. Frances’s marriage to an ASD graduate is included in the ASD-ASD count, while Mary’s marriage to an NYSD graduate is tallied in the NYSD-NYSD count. William M. Genet first attended NYSD and then ASD; his marriage to an NYSD graduate is counted in the NYSD-NYSD box. In addition to these three marriages, four other marriages united ASD and NYSD graduates.

2.3. Geographic analysis

In this section, we track the places of residence of deaf individuals from their homes as reported in school enrollment records to their later residences listed in the attendance registries of the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. We first describe the deaf population’s geographic distribution at enrollment, in 1850, and in 1854. Next, we consider the residences of 136 deaf individuals who attended both the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. These two analyses sketch the changing geographic configuration of the mid-19th-century American Deaf community in the northeastern US.

Distribution of the deaf population. In the first half of the 19th century, deaf individuals who would eventually enroll at ASD, NYSD, PSD, or the Central Institute in Canajoharie, NY mainly resided in the northeastern US. Figure 3A shows the hometowns at the time of enrollment of students who, by January 1854, had enrolled at ASD (1,168), NYSD (1,102), PSD (759), or the Central Institute (63).[1] These 3,092 students were resident in 1,522 unique towns during this roughly 37-year period. Figure 3B focuses on the northeastern US, which was the area with the highest density of hometowns at enrollment. In Figure 3B, each circle is scaled to reflect the number of students who shared the same hometown. For example, 202 students resided in New York City when they enrolled at NYSD, 80 residents of Philadelphia enrolled at PSD, and 49 ASD students were from Boston.

Inspection of the figure reveals that many students came from hometowns scattered across the eastern US and Canada and that the areas from which these schools drew their students overlapped. For example, 23 students from New York attended ASD up to 1854, and nine students from the New England states attended NYSD or the Central Institute in the same period. Many students attended multiple schools: 22 had enrolled at both ASD and NYSD by 1854; eight had done so at NYSD and PSD; five had enrolled at ASD and PSD; and one student, James Wheeler, had enrolled at all three schools. Students from outside the northeastern US attended a variety of schools, often before their own states established schools for the deaf. For example, of the 35 students whose hometowns were in Virginia during this period, 23 attended PSD, 10 attended ASD, and six attended NYSD; four students each attended two schools. Two attended both ASD and NYSD, one attended both PSD and ASD, and another attended both PSD and NYSD.

Distribution of deaf attendees at the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. By September 1850 and September 1854, when the two gatherings took place in Hartford, many deaf attendees had moved from their earlier hometowns. Of the attendees at the 1850 gathering whose residences at enrollment are known to us, 50% (102/204) had moved distances greater than 10 miles, and 23% (47/204) had moved more than 50 miles.[1] Figure 4 shows, at two points in time, residences of the deaf attendees at the 1850 gathering. Map A shows the residences prior to 1850—whether at the time of their enrollment at a school for the deaf, at birth if the individual did not attend a deaf school, or, in the case of Laurent Clerc, at the time of his earliest residence in the US. Map B shows the residences of these same individuals in 1850.[2]

Comparison of the maps in Figure 4 reveals that the earlier places of residence were more widely distributed across the northeastern US than the 1850 residences. Compared to the 141 unique towns that account for the earlier residences, just 94 are represented in the 1850 data. This consolidation was partly due to the growth of Hartford as a hub of the New England Deaf community: Of the attendees, only Laurent Clerc initially resided in Hartford, whereas 17 deaf attendees at the 1850 gathering lived in Hartford or East Hartford. The number of deaf attendees living in New York City grew from 15 to 22; however, there was no growth in the number of deaf attendees residing in the Boston area (20 vs. 19). Aside from New York City and Boston, just six towns were the hometowns of three or more deaf attendees: Lyme (3) and Norwich, CT (4); Plymouth (3), Salem (3), and Sandwich, MA (4); and Peterborough, NH (3). In 1850, five towns counted five or more deaf attendees as residents: Worcester (5) and Lowell (6), MA; Norwich (6) and Willimantic (6), CT; and Nashua, NH (5); another eight towns had three or four deaf residents who traveled to Hartford for the 1850 gathering. Prior to 1850, 107 out of 204 deaf attendees did not share a place of residence with any other attendee. By 1850, there were just 56 such attendees.

Let’s now consider the geographical distribution of deaf attendees at the 1854 gathering. By 1854, 41.5% (148/357) of deaf attendees had moved more than 10 miles from their earlier residences, and 23.8% (85/357) had moved more than 50 miles.[1] Figure 5 shows that many of these moves served to consolidate the number of towns where deaf individuals lived. Prior to 1854 (map A), the 357 deaf attendees resided in 230 unique towns; in 1854 (map B), that number was just 170. Prior to 1854, just six towns hosted five or more deaf attendees: New York (20), Boston (18), Salem, MA (6), Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard (5), Hartford (5), and Philadelphia (5). In 1854, 12 towns did so: New York (34), Boston (18), Hartford (17), Lowell, MA (9), Philadelphia (7), Charlestown near Boston (7), Norwich, CT (6), Worcester (6), Lawrence (5), Natick (5), Reading (5), and Waterbury (5). Prior to 1854, 167 individuals did not share a place of residence with another attendee. In 1854, there were just 110 singleton attendees.

Residences of attendees at both gatherings. As noted, 136 (52f, 84m) deaf individuals attended both the 1850 and 1854 gatherings. Given the commitment of time and money necessary to attend both gatherings, these individuals may have represented the core of the early American Deaf community. Most of these two-time attendees were graduates of ASD (115: 45f, 70m); another 17 were NYSD alumni (7f, 10m); three had not attended an American school for the deaf;[1] and one man had attended PSD.

Map A in Figure 6 shows the residences of these individuals when they enrolled at a school for the deaf. Inspection of the map reveals that, among the 98 unique places of residence, there were two large groups of deaf individuals whose homes were in Boston (9) and New York (11). All other circles in that map represent four (in Sandwich, MA) or fewer individuals. Map B shows that, by 1850, the places of residence of these 136 individuals were less dispersed, with 64 unique towns and three main centers: Boston (8 residents, plus 4 in the nearby towns of Roxbury, Somerville, and Charlestown), Hartford (12, plus 1 in East Hartford), and New York City (14). Other main concentrations of deaf attendees were Lowell, MA (6), Norwich, CT (5), and four other cities each with four deaf attendees. The situation in 1854 was largely the same as in 1850, though with a slightly greater number of unique places of residence (69); see map C. The three main centers remained Boston (8, plus another 8 nearby), Hartford (11, plus 1 in East Hartford), and New York City (12), with Norwich (6), Lowell (5), and four other cities (4 residents each) representing the other main concentrations of deaf attendees.

Why did these deaf individuals move between their enrollment and the later Hartford gatherings? After moving to Hartford or New York for school, many likely decided to remain in those cities rather than return to their hometowns. For example, John Burpe of Frederickton in New Brunswick, Canada attended ASD from 1842 to 1847. He finished his schooling at the age of 15 and, evidently, remained in Hartford after graduation; he resided there in 1850 and 1854, working as a “mechanic”. George Burchard resided in Watertown in northern New York before enrolling at a school for the deaf. He attended both the Central Institute in Canajoharie and NYSD between 1835 and 1842. In 1847, he married Elizabeth Disbrow (NYSD 1839–1845) of South Brunswick, NJ. In 1850 and 1854, the couple lived in New York City, where George worked as a “printer”.

Others moved to Hartford or New York to work at one of the schools. Jane Campbell of Bedford, NH graduated from ASD in 1848 and remained there to work in “domestic service”. In 1860, she married Salmon Crosset, who was the school’s Assistant Steward. Jeremiah Conklin of Huntington, NY attended NYSD from 1826 to 1834. He later became an instructor at NYSD; he was a resident of New York City in 1850 and 1854.

Some deaf individuals apparently moved to be closer to the Deaf community or to play a part in its formation. Jonathan P. Marsh (ASD 1827–1833) of Winchester, CT married Paulina Bowdish (ASD 1831–1836) of Douglas, MA in 1840. At the time of the 1850 gathering, the couple lived in Willimantic, CT together with Paulina’s deaf brother Moses (ASD 1830–1833) and a former schoolmate Samuel Lewis (ASD 1829–1834). By October 1850, Jonathan and Paulina had moved to Roxbury, then a small town just a few miles south of Boston. Together with 10 other deaf individuals, Jonathan started a Bible study group at the Park Street Congregational Church in Boston; in 1851, the group was officially called the “Deaf Mutes’ Bible Class” (Marsh 1857: 242–245). The class may have attracted other deaf individuals to Boston: Marsh reported in 1857 that there were some 30 to 35 who attended weekly. Later, Jonathan became one of the founding members of the Boston Deaf-Mute Christian Association and one of the Directors of the Boston Deaf-Mute Library Association (Swett 1874).

Summary. By 1850 and 1854, the deaf population in New England, New York, and eastern Canada had become more urban, concentrated to a greater extent in populous cities such as New York and Boston, as well as Hartford. Many deaf attendees at the Hartford gatherings (1850: 47/204; 1854: 85/353) had moved distances greater than 50 miles since enrolling at a school for the deaf. There were many factors driving these moves, likely including marriage, the desire by some graduates to remain close to their school-based signing community, the availability of employment at schools for the deaf, and the desire to support the fledgling Deaf community in large cities like Boston.

3. Conclusions

In the early decades of the 19th century, the deaf population in the eastern US and Canada was distributed across a vast area. During this same period, many deaf individuals were born into families with other deaf members: 31% of the 1,700 students who attended ASD between 1817 and 1867 had at least one first-degree deaf relative (Power & Meier 2023). However, many others likely were the only deaf individuals in their hometowns and in the surrounding area. After the 1817 founding of ASD, hundreds of deaf students from across New England and beyond called Hartford home for 4 to 6 years on average (Power & Meier 2023). In this way, much of the New England deaf population was drawn together into one location and the roots of a signing community were planted there.

After leaving ASD, this new signing community faced a challenge to its persistence. How would the community maintain its social and linguistic ties across vast geographic space once community members had dispersed to their hometowns? Prior scholarship has shown that many deaf individuals fostered connections within the community via letter-writing, through marriage, and by traveling to visit one another on the expanding rail network in the northeastern US (Lane et al. 2007; Edwards 2012; Power & Meier 2023, 2024). The 1850s also witnessed the founding of the first deaf-led organization in the US, the New England Gallaudet Association, of the first US deaf church, St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf in New York City, and, as we have seen, of the first deaf-led Bible class in Boston (Edwards 2012; Berg & Buzzard 1989; Braddock 1975). These were the first among many other deaf-led organizations that were started in the second half of the 19th century.

In this paper, we have highlighted other ways deaf individuals sustained the early American Deaf community. The Hartford gatherings themselves surely served to renew ties among former schoolmates. In 1850 and 1854, large proportions of former ASD students were drawn back to Hartford: Nearly a third of living ASD graduates attended the 1854 gathering. Many of these former schoolmates had married one another; 56 such marriages were represented at the 1854 gathering, and 36 ASD couples traveled to Hartford together. Some couples may have formed at the gatherings, or perhaps they resumed earlier relationships that had begun at ASD. For example, Albert Barnard of Nantucket (ASD 1832–1839) overlapped for one year at ASD with his eventual spouse, Rhoda Edson (1838–1845) of Hartford, VT. Both Albert and Rhoda (then living in Lowell, MA) were unmarried when they attended the 1850 gathering in Hartford. The couple married in 1851 in Nashville, NH and together attended the 1854 gathering.

The Hartford gatherings open a window onto the state of the early Deaf community. That 136 deaf individuals attended both the 1850 and 1854 gatherings lends support to the idea that the community had developed a solid core in the first half of the 19th century. Intriguingly, that community encompassed both schooled and, to a limited extent, unschooled deaf individuals. Thomas Daggett of Providence, RI and William Plumley of Boston attended the Hartford gatherings in 1850 and 1854, though they evidently never attended any school for the deaf. By the 1850s, the community had expanded beyond the schools, and was not primarily composed of adolescent students, as it initially had been. The mean age of ASD students who enrolled in the 1850s was 12.4 years (n = 396, SD = 4.0), whereas ASD alumni at the Hartford gatherings were in their 30s on average (1850: M = 34.2; 1854: M = 34.6). In sum, in the four decades from 1817 to 1854, the demographic structure of the early American signing community had changed in important ways.

Several factors drove the community towards greater geographic consolidation. The marriages of deaf individuals who had met at ASD tended to reduce the geographic distribution of the deaf population, since these couples came to share a residence. As noted, several former students were employed at ASD and NYSD as teachers, assistant matrons, or staff. Others, though not working at a deaf school, settled in Hartford or New York. The increasing number of deaf adults in Hartford who were not then students at ASD meant that a more encompassing signing community—in terms of age, marital status, and employment, among other characteristics—was developing in that city.

Broader societal trends in the United States, such as those leading to urbanization, also drove many deaf individuals to move from their hometowns to more populous economic centers (Buchanan 1999). Former ASD students, such as Rhoda Edson, John Ham, Charlotte Lovejoy, and James Whittlesey, moved from their various hometowns in New Hampshire to Lowell, MA to work in the burgeoning textile industry there (Dublin 1979; Gross 1993). As we have seen, Jonathan Marsh and Paulina Bowdish moved from Willimantic, CT to the Boston area, where Jonathan worked as a “piano forte maker”. There they established a Bible study group and became key members of deaf-led organizations. Whatever the precise reasons for the movements of deaf individuals to urban centers during this period, those movements ultimately brought deaf people closer and likely fostered the growth of the American Deaf community.

Finally, our analysis of the Hartford gatherings sheds light on the inter-regional ties that had developed by the mid-19th century among school-based communities and that may have worked against the emergence of regional linguistic barriers within the American Deaf community. Schools for the deaf have been linked to regional variation in several contexts, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain. In the Netherlands and Belgium, Nyst & Schüller (2024) linked the origins of two regional dialects—the Gestel variety of Sign Language of the Netherlands and the Limburg variety of Flemish Sign Language—to a network of Catholic schools for the deaf in those areas. Quinn (2010) argued that the development of regional lexical variation in British Sign Language is tied to the geographically distinct schools for the deaf in Britain (see also Schembri et al. 2010; Stamp 2013). Together with colleagues in the UK, we have recently begun a project examining records of the London Asylum for the Deaf; and we plan to study the records of other schools for the deaf in England soon, such as the school in Manchester. These records will give us insight into the development of regional variation in British Sign Language.

Although the geographically distinct American schools for the deaf may have been sources of regional variation in early ASL, the links revealed by our analyses among the alumni of American schools for the deaf may have served to level such regional variation, at least in this part of the US (Bayley et al. 2002; Stamp et al. 2016). As we have seen, multiple marriages united alumni of these schools—in particular, the alumni of ASD and NYSD. Several students attended multiple schools; for example, by the time of the Hartford gatherings, James Wheeler had attended four schools for the deaf—first NYSD, then PSD, the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus, and finally ASD. ASD graduates such as Fisher Spofford (ASD 1819–1826) were employed as teachers at NYSD; and James Wheeler taught at ASD (Edwards 2012). Other graduates, such as Charles Parker of West Rupert, VT (ASD 1841–1849), moved from New England to New York, where he worked in the printing industry. He was likely a member of St. Ann’s; he and Ellen Wright (ASD 1847–1852) married there in 1856 (Gallaudet 1856). The full extent of such cross-regional ties awaits fuller investigation using a broader data set. The types of links represented at the Hartford gatherings provide an outline for such future research.

Acknowledgments

We thank Roland Pfau for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This research has been supported by the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

Additional Information

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

Statement of Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Texas Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/4KPU9D.

Funding Sources

This research has been supported by the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Review

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25189/2675-4916.2025.V6.N1.ID790.R

Editorial Decision

EDITOR 1: Joe Salmons

AFFILIATION: University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, Estados Unidos.

EDITOR 2: Josh Brown

AFFILIATION: University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Estados Unidos.

EDITOR 3: David Natvig

AFFILIATION: University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, Estados Unidos.

DECISION LETTER: The development of signed languages has provided historical linguistics with remarkable new insights about how new languages come to be. This remarkable paper takes an important step toward understanding how one such language, American Sign Language, spread and established itself from a small base in Hartford, Conn., to become a national (and international) language. The authors trace the movement of individual users location by location, providing the most detailed possible account of social transmission of the language over time and geographical space.

Rounds of Review

REVIEWER 1: Mark Richard Lauersdorf

AFFILIATION: University of Kentucky, Kentucky, Estados Unidos.

REVIEWER 2: Ronice Muller de Quadros

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5152-8716

AFFILIATION: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Santa Catarina, Brasil.

REVIEWER 3: Roland Pfau

AFFILIATION: University of Amsterdam, Holanda do Norte, Países Baixos.

ROUND 1

REVIEWER 1

2025-06-10 | 07:42 AM

This article gives a detailed description, and an initial socio-historical and geo-spatial interpretation, of a rich dataset of demographic information for two specific cohorts of individuals from the American Deaf community, associated primarily with two schools for the Deaf in the first half of the 19th century in the northeastern part of the United States – the American School for the Deaf (ASD) and the New York School for the Deaf (NYSD).

The patterning of the demographic variables of age, gender, school affiliation, and marital status is described in detail for the two cohorts. The geo-spatial distribution of these individuals is then analyzed across the timespan covered by the investigation with the goal of: (1) determining patterns of mobility and settlement of these individuals during this critical period in the development of the American Deaf community and of American Sign Language (ASL), and (2) assessing the potential effects of any identified patterns of mobility and settlement on that development.

The authors achieve these goals and do not overreach in their interpretations of the data. The article thus serves as a detailed introduction to a novel dataset and as an exploratory examination of the potential explanatory power/value of this type of dataset, providing a model/template for future (possibly larger-scale or more finely detailed) investigations of the same type. And, while primarily quantitative in nature, the investigation also presents some closer, qualitative analysis of select individuals from the cohort, demonstrating additional analytical/interpretive directions that might be possible with the collection of further socio-historical information.

The data available in the two primary sources used in this paper is thoroughly described for its demographic variables (age, gender, school affiliation, and marital status), but given the chosen direction for the exploratory geo-spatial analysis of the data, gender does not figure prominently in the analysis or conclusions (might it have played a role in determining the direction of the mobility and settlement of the married couples discussed – did they move in the direction of the female's or the male's hometown / location of employment / etc.?). Even if not readily deployable in the geo-spatial analysis undertaken in the paper, the gender variable could be significant in other potential investigations based on this dataset, thus it is appropriate to have given full description of it here and I'm curious if the authors already have ideas (I suspect that they do!) for further investigations that more centrally involve questions of gender.

This paper provides additional strength to the call to work interdisciplinarily to gather and use *ALL* the data pertinent to research questions in historical sociolinguistic investigations; and it further advances our methods for doing so. It specifically exemplifies insights and interpretations that are possible through the inclusion, in our research, of socio-historical information that does not necessarily provide direct language samples. Such use of *ALL* the data is especially important in instances where the linguistic data available for direct analysis is extremely limited, as it is in this 19th-century ASL context. In this regard, it will be interesting to see what future datasets of this type the authors might be able to harness to further this specific investigation, e.g., church records showing births, marriages, deaths, and memberships in church organizations (bible studies, choirs, guilds, etc.); property deeds, business registrations, court documents, and other records generated by the growing civil infrastructure and civil service of the period; etc.

The initial work done in this paper to highlight connections between the two schools of primary focus (ASD and NYSD), and between the individual alumni of those schools, immediately leads this reviewer to think in the methodological direction of social network analysis; and it whets my curiosity about how dense and multiplex this network of former students might have been, and whether the full density and multiplexity of the network might be recoverable in the extant historical data, given enough time and resources to devote to data collection and processing. As stated by the authors in their conclusion: "The full extent of such cross-regional ties awaits fuller investigation using a broader data set. The types of links represented at the Hartford gatherings provide an outline for such future research."

REVIEWER 2

2025-05-15 | 01:34 PM

The primary goal of this paper is to deepen our understanding of early social interactions and regional diversity within the 19th-century American deaf community, using data from two significant gatherings in Hartford in 1850 and 1854. The authors analyze attendance records stored in the Museum Archives of the American School for the Deaf, which include demographic details such as names, ages, residences, occupations, and family information of many deaf individuals from various regions. Despite some gaps and inconsistencies, they enhance this data with additional genealogical and historical sources, including their own previous work on ASD students and newly compiled data from the NYSD, to fill in missing details like birthdates and graduation dates. This systematic approach demonstrates a rigorous and innovative method for reconstructing social networks and interaction patterns of early deaf communities, providing a rich dataset to support their investigation into the origins and regional development of American Sign Language. Based on the two gatherings, the findings suggest that the deaf community was primarily centered around alumni networks, with many individuals married within the community and attending as couples, which strengthened social bonds and community cohesion. Additionally, the findings indicate that the deaf population was increasingly urbanized, with many relocating over long distances for personal, social, or professional reasons. This mobility likely facilitated the spread and interaction of regional sign language varieties, contributing to greater communication across different deaf communities in the 19th century. This is a very interesting and valuable paper that significantly contributes to our understanding of how deaf communities and their sign language developed in America. It also sheds light on the inter-regional connections among deaf schools, offering insights that can serve as valuable references for studies of other sign languages, such as Libras. I am favorable toward its publication.

REVIEWER 3

2025-05-25 | 01:01 PM

A very insightful contribution. The way in which the authors trace the development of the American deaf community and the dispersion of ASL based on a meticulous analysis of demographic data – the registries of deaf gatherings that took place in 1850 and 1854 in Hartford, CT – is truly impressive. The results of this, without doubt time-consuming, “detective work” are as interesting as they are important.The method is convincing, and the results are clearly presented and interpreted.I recommend this paper to everyone who is interested in (American) deaf history, deaf culture, and variation issues.

Authors' Replay

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25189/2675-4916.2025.V6.N1.ID790.A

ROUND 1

2025-06-03

Dear Joe, Josh, and David,

We have now revised our manuscript (790). Before addressing the reviews, we would like to highlight one change to the paper’s title and one major addition to the paper.

In order to avoid ambiguity in the meaning of the word “place,” we have decided to change the title from “The structure and place of the ASL signing community in the mid-nineteenth century: The Hartford gatherings of 1850 and 1854” to “The structure and geography of the ASL signing community in the mid-nineteenth century: The Hartford gatherings of 1850 and 1854.”

After the original submission, we began to create a new database of students who attended the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD), 1820-1867, based on the school’s admissions records. We have now added 759 PSD students who enrolled through the end of 1853 to the maps in Figure 3. We’ve also updated the numbers in Section 2.3 (previously 3.3) to reflect these additional students. Because of our recent work on PSD, we have been able to confirm the identities of two attendees at the 1854 gathering; their identities were unclear to us when we first submitted the manuscript. Edwin Saeger and Comly Coates were both students at PSD and attendees at the 1854 gathering. We have now removed the footnote to Table 2, which expressed our uncertainty about Edwin’s identity.

In the following pages, we provide detailed notes on the reviewers’ comments and questions.

Best regards,

Justin M. Power and Richard P. Meier

Reviewer 1: This reviewer recommended that we include a translation in Portuguese of our abstract, along with keywords. We have now done so.

Reviewer 2: This reviewer made one major suggestion about the structure of the paper and a number of other helpful suggestions. We begin by addressing the reviewer’s major suggestion.

· Discussion section: The reviewer asked us to consider adding a discussion section that "addresses (in two subsections) the building of the community and levelling of variation” and to do so in light of research on BSL and NGT.

We appreciate this suggestion, but we’ve decided to take a slightly different approach. Rather than adding a discussion section, we have decided to flesh out the final part of the conclusions. The type of detailed historical demographic analysis that we’ve done in this paper has not yet been done for any other deaf community, as far as we’re aware. Thus, it would be difficult, at this time, to do the type of comparison the reviewer suggests. However, we have now started a new project with colleagues in the UK that takes a historical demographic approach to the school for the deaf in London. We’ve added a brief description of that new project to our conclusions. We hope that we will soon be able to do the type of comparison that the reviewer suggests.

· Citation to Johnston (2003)

That citation is relevant, and we’ve now added it.

· Motivation for analyzing the first two gatherings but not the last two

We have focused on the first two gatherings in this paper because, of the four gatherings, they were the two earliest and the two most broadly accessible. As we describe in the paper, the 1850 and 1854 gatherings were apparently open to all attendees, whether deaf or hearing and whether from the US or abroad. The 1860 and 1866 gatherings were conventions of the New England Gallaudet Association and were only open to its members. In future work, we aim to analyze data from the latter two gatherings. We have added a footnote (FN2) with this information.

· Breakdown of attendees by hearing status on pages 4 and 9

We’ve added clarifying information to the last paragraph of Section 1.1 (previously 2.1).

· Spelling of “shew”

This was an accepted spelling of “show” in 19th-century America. We’ve added (sic) to this quotation.

· Denominator for the analysis of ages in 1850

The age of one deaf attendee is missing from the 1850 registry. We’ve added a footnote (FN9) to make this clear, and we’ve added a parenthetical clarification to the caption for Figure 1.

· X-axis of Figure 1

We’ve added a sentence to the caption for Figure 1 clarifying that each bar covers two years.

· Question about Lucy Backus and the vocational nature of ASD.

In Power & Meier (2023), we showed that ASD’s student body was older than we might have thought (14.4 years old on average). Lucy Backus was among the oldest students, but she was by no means the only student to enroll at ASD as an adult. The school gradually incorporated vocational elements, but it was not primarily a vocational school. Its early focus was squarely on English and religion.

· Question about the Budd-Gallaudet marriage

The reviewer rightly noted that this sentence seems out of place. We have deleted it.

· Table 2: 340 is the count in the table, but 339 is given in the text.

The number 339 in the text reports the tally of attendees at the 1854 gathering who had attended either ASD or NYSD. One student attended both schools. The table breaks down attendees by alma mater, so we double count Mary Totten in that table. We have now added a note to the table to clarify this difference. It reads: The table double counts seven students who attended more than one school. For example, Mary (Rose) Totten attended both ASD and NYSD. She is counted in the “Female” column for both schools.

· Manchester

We’ve added “England” to clarify that this is not Manchester, NH.

· Histogram of the age distribution in 1854.

We’ve added a histogram (now Figure 2) for the 1854 meeting.

· Add comparison to Section 3.2: The reviewer asked us to directly compare the demographics of attendees at the two gatherings.

We’ve added a subsection (Comparison of deaf attendees’ ages at the 1850 and 1854 gatherings) to Section 2.2 (previously 3.2) as suggested.

· Size of maps

We agree that it would be best to increase the dimensions of the maps. We will provide the images in high resolution (as PDFs and JPGs), and we will discuss the issues pertaining to the layout with the editors. We also take this opportunity to note changes to the maps in Figure 5. We have slightly changed the area visible in this set of maps in order to show all points, instead of reducing the area in order to focus on the northeast. We have now removed footnote 11, which explained that some points were not shown on the previous version of the two maps.

· Question about Figure 5 (now Figure 6): The reviewer asked whether any deaf attendees moved to a location/state outside the border of the map.

In this subset of the data (i.e., deaf attendees of both 1850 and 1854), all points are visible on these three maps.

· Elizabeth Disbrow’s school

We’ve added “NYSD” as suggested.

· Scope of our argument: The reviewer asked whether our conclusions only apply to the relationship between ASD and NYSD, or whether we see our argument as more broadly generalizable.

We think that these types of links among students (e.g., marriage, attendance at multiple schools, graduates of one school teaching at another, graduates of various schools attending the same deaf churches) should, in general, work to mitigate the development of regional variation. These data only allow us to speak in detail about the links between ASD and NYSD.

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Edição: v. 6 n. 1 (2025)
Enviado: 06/05/2024
Publicado: 07/08/2025
DOI: 10.25189/2675-4916.2025.v6.n1.id790

Como Citar

POWER, J.; MEIER, R. P. The Structure and Geography of the ASL Signing Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Hartford Gatherings of 1850 and 1854. Cadernos de Linguística, [S. l.], v. 6, n. 1, p. e790, 2025. DOI: 10.25189/2675-4916.2025.v6.n1.id790. Disponível em: https://cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/cadernos/article/view/790. Acesso em: 29 ago. 2025.

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The Structure and Geography of the ASL Signing Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Hartford Gatherings of 1850 and 1854

Justin Power

Richard P. Meier

Resumo

Lay Summary

Introduction

1. Data and methods

1.1. Data

1.2. Methods

2. Analysis

2.1. The 1850 gathering in honor of Clerc and Gallaudet

2.2. The gathering to commemorate Gallaudet

2.3. Geographic analysis

3. Conclusions

Acknowledgments

Additional Information

References

Review

Editorial Decision

Rounds of Review

Authors' Replay

Como Citar

Estatísticas

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