Remembrances - Gallaudet, part 1

Gallaudet, Franklin Township's "lost town" was the dream of James S. Brown, a teacher of the deaf who admired and respected Thomas H. Gallaudet, founder of the first school in America for the deaf. The directors of the new Indiana School for the Deaf invited Brown, a teacher at the Ohio Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, to supervise the new Indiana School for the Deaf, organized in 1843 by William Willard, a graduate of Thomas Gallaudet's American Asylum in Hartford, Connecticut, The school's directors believed it was better to have a principal who could hear and speak, and hired Mr. Brown in 1846. Mr. Willard continued as his assistant.

Gallaudet's American Asylum had become well-known. As a young man Thomas Gallaudet, born in Philadelphia in 1787, had trouble deciding on a career. He graduated from Yale, studied law, was in business for a while and was attending Andover Seminary when he met Alice Cogswell, the nine year old daughter of friends. She had been deaf since an illness in infancy, and could neither hear nor speak. Gallaudet was able to teach her a few words, using the manual alphabet and writing the names of objects. Her parents wanted him to continue to teach her, but he felt inadequate. He finished seminary, and then followed the wishes of Alice's parents and friends who sent him to France to learn their successful methods of teaching the deaf. He returned home and opened his school. Alice was his first pupil. In the class also was a 19 year old student who became his wife.

The Indiana School for the Deaf prospered and James Brown bought land for a home in Franklin Township. From 1840 to 1852 he invested in several adjoining tracts, totaling 350 acres, and granted a diagonal right-of-way through his land to the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Railroad, then under construction. He dreamed of a town at the railroad crossing, and named it Gallaudet, in honor of his idol, Thomas Gallaudet.

In 1852 Brown resigned from the school, moving to Louisiana to help organize a deaf school there. He kept his Indiana property, hoping the town might grow. A post office was established at Gallaudet on January 30, 1854. The train dropped the mail off at the "depot," the porch of a two story house that stood close to the tracks on the south east corner of the crossing. It was picked up twice a day and carried by horse and wagon to the New Bethel (Wanamaker) Post Office. The saw-mill that Brown built was "never used," and the store burned. Brown left the Louisiana Institution in 1860, apparently returning to Indiana, for among the Gallaudet postmasters he is listed as serving from October 3, 1861, to November 28, 1862. He died on June 8, 1863.

Above: Detail of township map showing Gallaudet Station, which was located across from the present-day Franklin Road library.