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Laura Dewey Lynn Bridgman (December 21, 1829 – May 24, 1889) was the first deaf-blind American child to gain a significant education in the English language, twenty years before the more famous Helen Keller; Laura's friend Anne Sullivan became Helen Keller's aide. Bridgman was left deaf-blind at the age of two after contracting 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. Her 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. Early years Bridgman was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. She was 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, who often had 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. Education at the Perkins School In 1837, James Barrett of Dartmouth College saw Bridgman and mentioned her case to Dr. Reuben Mussey, the head of the medical department. Mussey visited the Bridgman home and found Laura an affectionate and intelligent girl who, despite her severe disabilities, could perform basic household tasks such as sewing and setting the table. Mussey sent an account to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, who was eager to educate the young Bridgman. Bridgman entered the school on October 12, 1837, two months before her eighth birthday. Bridgman was frightened and homesick at first, but she soon formed an attachment to the house matron, Miss Lydia Hall Drew (1815-1887), who was also her first instructor at the school. Howe had recently met Julia Brace, a deaf-blind resident at the American School for the Deaf who communicated by using a series of primitive signs; however, her instructors had failed to teach her more advanced methods of communication, such as adapted forms of tactile sign. Howe developed a plan to teach Bridgman to read and write through tactile means — something that had not been attempted previously, to his knowledge. Howe's plan was based on the theories of the French philosopher Denis Diderot, who believed the sense of touch could develop its "own medium of symbolic language." At first he and his assistant, Lydia Hall Drew, used words printed with raised letters, and later they progressed to using a manual alphabet expressed through mapping the English alphabet on to points and tracing motions on the palm of the hand. Eventually she received a broad education. Howe taught Bridgman words before the individual letters. His first experiment consisted of pasting paper labels upon several common articles such as keys, spoons, and knives, with the names of the articles printed in raised letters. He then had her feel the labels by themselves, and she learned to associate the raised letters with the articles to which they referred. Eventually, she could find the right label for each object from a mixed heap. The next stage was to give her the individual letters and teach her to combine them to spell the words she knew. Gradually, in this way, she learned the alphabet and the ten digits. Her own interest in learning became keener as she progressed in her studies. Howe devoted himself to Bridgman's education and was rewarded with increasing success. On July 24, 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly. On June 20, 1840 she had her first arithmetic lesson, with the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated as a daughter by Howe. She lived in the director's apartment with Howe and his sister, Jeannette Howe, until Howe married Julia Ward in 1843. Her case already began to interest the public, and others were brought to Dr. Howe for treatment. Fame From the beginning of his work with Bridgman, Howe sent accounts of her progress and his teaching strategies to European journals, which were "read by thousands." In January 1842, Charles Dickens visited the Institution, and afterwards wrote enthusiastically in his American Notes of Howe's success with Bridgman. Dickens quotes Howe's account of Bridgman's education:Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong; and when she is sitting at work, or by the side of one of her little friends, she will break off from her task every few moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to behold. When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses herself, and seems quite content; and so strong seems to be the natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of language, that she often soliloquizes in the finger language, slow and tedious as it is. But it is only when alone, that she is quiet; for if she becomes sensible of the presence of any one near her, she is restless until she can sit close beside them, hold their hand, and converse with them by sign. Following the publication of Dickens's book, Bridgman became world famous. Thousands of people visited her at the Perkins School, "asked for keepsakes, followed her in the newspapers, and read paeans to her in evangelical journals and ladies' magazines". On Saturdays, the school was open to the public. Crowds gathered to watch Laura read and point out locations on a map with raised letters. Laura became "very much excited" by these events, but her teachers were concerned because Laura knew she drew more attention than the other students. In the lat.... Discover the Elisabeth Gitter popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Elisabeth Gitter books.