Happy Birthday, Laurent Clerc! He was born on this date (Dec. 26) in 1785

Clerc is best known for co-founding the oldest permanent school for the deaf in North America with Thomas Gallaudet.

Clerc was born near Lyons, France, on December 26, 1785. At the age of one, he lost his hearing when he fell into a fire. After graduating from the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris, he decided to stay as an assistant teacher. Eventually, Clerc was promoted to the highest rank.

Thomas Gallaudet met Clerc while he was teaching who invited Clerc to come with him to America. They set sail in 1816 and a year after they arrived, they founded a school for the deaf in Harford, Connecticut using Clerc's knowledge of sign language as it was taught in Paris. This was combined with what the students brought from their homes in New York City,

Philadelphia, and Martha’s Vineyard, which had an unusually large population of deaf people at the time. Out of this mix came what is known today as American Sign Language. Their school eventually became the American School for the Deaf.

Clerc had intended to return to France but in 1819 he married Eliza Crocker Boardman, one of his pupils. They had six children and he retired in 1858. He died on July 18, 1869.