Laura Bridgman
| Laura Dewey Lynn Bridgman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
December 21, 1829 Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Died | May 24, 1889 (aged 59) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Resting place | Dana Cemetery, Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Education | Perkins School for the Blind |
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. Bridgman was left blind and deaf at the age of two after suffering a bout of scarlet fever. She was educated at the Perkins Institution for the Blind where, under the direction of Samuel Gridley Howe, she learned to read and communicate using braille and the manual alphabet developed by Charles-Michel de l'Épée.
For several years, Bridgman gained celebrity status when Charles Dickens met her during his 1842 American tour and wrote about her accomplishments in his American Notes. Bridgman's fame was short-lived, however, and she spent the remainder of her life in relative obscurity, most of it at the Perkins Institute, where she passed her time sewing and reading books in braille.
Laura Bridgman was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, 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, small and rickety, and suffered from convulsions until she was eighteen months old. Her family was struck with scarlet fever when Laura was two years old. The illness killed her two older sisters and left her deaf, blind, and without a sense of smell or taste. Though she gradually recovered her health, she remained deaf and blind. Laura's mother kept her well-groomed and showed the child affection, but Laura received little attention from the rest of her family, including her father who, on occasion, tried to "frighten her into obedience" by stamping his foot hard on the floor to startle her with the vibrations. Her closest friend was a kind, mentally impaired hired man of the Bridgmans, Asa Tenney, whom she credited with making her childhood happy. Tenney had some kind of expressive language disorder himself, and communicated with Laura in signs. He knew Native Americans who used a sign language, (probably Abenaki using Plains Indian Sign Language), and had begun to teach Laura to express herself using these signs when she was sent away to school.
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