The American School for the Deaf (ASD), originally The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, is the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States, and the first school for deaf children anywhere in the western hemisphere. It was founded April 15, 1817, in Hartford, Connecticut, by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Mason Cogswell, and Laurent Clerc and became a state-supported school later that year. Asylum Street, in Hartford, and Asylum Avenue, in Hartford and West Hartford, were named for the school.
>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
👉 American School for the Deaf in the context of American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.
ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the deaf and deaf community organizations. Despite its wide use, no accurate count of ASL users has been taken. Reliable estimates for American ASL users range from 250,000 to 500,000 persons, including a number of children of deaf adults (CODA) and other hearing individuals.
In this Dossier
American School for the Deaf in the context of Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 at the 2020 census and was estimated at 124,006 in 2025. Hartford is the most populous city in the Capitol Planning Region and the core city of the Greater Hartford metropolitan area with 1.17 million residents.
Founded in 1635, Hartford is among the oldest cities in the United States of America. It is home to the country's second oldest public art museum (Wadsworth Atheneum), the second oldest publicly funded park (Bushnell Park), the oldest continuously published newspaper (the Hartford Courant), the second-oldest secondary school (Hartford Public High School), and the oldest school for deaf children (American School for the Deaf), founded by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet in 1817. It is the location of the Mark Twain House, in which the author Mark Twain wrote his most famous works and raised his family. He wrote in 1868, "Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see this is the chief."
American School for the Deaf in the context of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (December 10, 1787 – September 10, 1851) was an American educator. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and he became its first principal. When opened on April 15, 1817, it was called the "Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons", but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf.