Deaf History is American History: An Exploration of Gallaudet University Archives | Archives Deep Dive
Chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC, holds the distinction of being the only bilingual university for Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and other Deaf Disabled students in the world. Consequently, it has the world’s largest archives of materials related to deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, with a mission to preserve “the institutional memory of the University and historic material from the global Deaf community,” according to the Gallaudet website.
Gallaudet began as a school and housing for Deaf and Blind students in 1856, officially named the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind in 1857. Its mission grew when it became a degree conferring institution in 1864, with its first class graduating in 1869.
In 1894, the institution’s college was renamed Gallaudet College after Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who established the American School for the Deaf, the first school for Deaf people in the United States, in 1817. The entire school was designated Gallaudet College by another act of Congress in 1954, and in 1986 the institution became Gallaudet University.
For the first half of the 20th century, Gallaudet offered general education classes with a few concentrations in printing and animal husbandry. However, in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a rise in the number of children born deaf because their mothers contracted Rubella during pregnancy. Gallaudet redeveloped its curriculum to fulfill the growing need for an institution of higher education for the Deaf and hard of hearing community. These developments helped grow the archival institution records, said archives Director Jim McCarthy.