Asl part 1--Deaf history pt.1

The history of the Deaf is very long. It all started in the 19th century when Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell from Hartford, Connecticut had a daughter named Alice. Alice was deaf because of cerebrospinal meningitis (a common cause of deafness) and therefore lived a silent life with virtually no way to communicate even with her family. Then she met Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who just happened to be her neighbor.
Thomas H. Gallaudet was born in 1787 in Pennsylvania and would later go on to found the most successful liberal arts college for the Deaf people (Gallaudet University). Gallaudet was recovering from a lung illness that would plague him for the rest of his life. After talking with Alice’s father, both Gallaudet and Cogswell decided to do something about Alice’s deafness even though they knew that they couldn’t fix it. They got together with ten other men who were fathers of deaf children and reached the decision to send one of their men to find out about Sign Language.
Thomas Gallaudet set sail for Paris around 1815 and his first stop was the preeminent Braidwood Academy for the Deaf and Dumb. However, the Braidwoods were less then willing to let Gallaudet in on their secrets and so, disgusted with the Academy, he went on to find some other source of Sign Language. Gallaudet found the help he'd been looking for with the Abbe Charles Michel de l’Epee. Abbe de l’Epee had first encountered Sign Language when he met two twin girls who were deaf and whose mother begged him to teach them. He adapted the Spanish form of fingerspelling and proceeded to educate the girls. He went on to found the National Institute for Young Deaf-Mutes in the 1760’s.