Albert Louis Edgerton Crouter was born on September 15, 1846 in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. He was a member of a Huguenot family which moved to Germany and later to New York City. Loyal to King George, Crouter's ancestors went to Canada during the Revolution. His father was Abraham Lewis Crouter and his mother was Elizabeth Eliza German.
After finishing his primary and secondary education in the Belleville schools, he entered Albert College.
At seventeen he became a teacher in the public schools in Belleville. At twenty he moved to Kansas, where he taught in an Indian school at Shawneetown. While he was there Thomas Burnside, superintendent of the Kansas School for the Deaf at Olathe, offered him a position which he accepted before his twenty-first birthday. From that time until his death he was actively engaged in the education of the deaf.
At the age of twenty-one he was offered the superintendency of the Kansas school. He accepted, however, an offer to teach in the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf at Philadelphia, and in 1884 he became its principal.
Becoming interested in the oral method of instructing the deaf, he organized a separate department for orally taught pupils, extended the trades teaching of the school, and established a normal department. Later all class work was done orally.
In 1892, under Crouter's guidance, the Pennsylvania Institution was moved to Mount Airy, where new grounds and modern buildings with every convenience had been provided by his energy and foresight. The grouping of the buildings into three separate departments according to the ages of the children, and the addition of a manual-training department, have made this a model residential institution for deaf children. The title of principal of this school was changed to that of superintendent without changing the duties, and Crouter remained until his death superintendent of the Pennsylvania Institution.
He was for many years a member of the Executive Committee of the Conference of Superintendents and Principals of American Schools for the Deaf.
He found time to attend meetings of the deaf themselves and to address them in the language of signs.
He was rector's warden of Grace Church, Mount Airy, for many years, and from 1895 until his death he was a member of the commission in charge of the Episcopal Mission for the deaf in Philadelphia.
He wrote many papers dealing with the education of deaf pupils and with the training of teachers of the deaf, among them being "Marriages of the Deaf, " in The American Annals of the Deaf, October 1889; "The Deaf in Hearing Schools and in Day Schools, " Ibid. , May 1904; "The Supervision and Care of Pupils, " Ibid. , January 1905; "The Training of Teachers, " Ibid. , November 1911. His style was particularly clear and forceful.
Crouter was singularly successful as an executive. His presence was commanding but his expression was attractive and kindly, and he was well loved by his pupils and by the members of his profession.
His school for the deaf was the largest and best-known, and was visited and studied by teachers of the deaf from all parts of the world. He was one of the founders of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, and became its president in 1904, succeeding Alexander Graham Bell. He represented the United States at the Seventh International Conference of Instructors of the Deaf at Edinburgh, and attended practically every important gathering of instructors of the deaf in the United States throughout the whole term of his connection with the Pennsylvania Institution, which lasted for fifty-eight years.
On April 30, 1895, he was married to June Yale, a teacher of the deaf at the Clarke School at Northampton, Massachussets Three of their nine children have followed their parents' calling.
