Laura Dewey Bridgman

Background

Laura Dewey Bridgman was born on December 21, 1829 in Hanover, New Hampshire, the daughter of Daniel and Harmony Bridgman.

Education

In 1837 Samuel Gridley Howe heard of Laura's case and visited her home. He found her an attractive child with a nervous organization which made for sensibility and activity, and persuaded her parents to let him undertake her education. In October of that year she became his pupil at the Perkins Institution in Boston. For a year or two Howe himself patiently taught her. The particular significance of her case lay in the fact that she was the first blind, deaf, mute in whose case systematic education had been at all successful. Because of her, others in her situation have had life made more worth while.

In the fall of 1839, Laura was sent home with a teacher for the annual three weeks' vacation. The change in her was remarkable. Dickens saw her on one of his American trips and was greatly impressed. At the age of fourteen she had completed Colburn's Mental Arithmetic in a little over a year. She finished the study of the continent of Africa in four lessons.

Career

At fifteen Laura visited a woolen factory and a grist-mill and understood and remembered much about both. Three years later she taught a deaf and practically blind child arithmetic for an hour a day. She returned to her father's home in Hanover when she was twenty-three with the understanding that it was to be her permanent home. Intense homesickness, however, for the varied life of the Institution made it advisable for her to return there to live. Here she spent the rest of her life.

She had a light share in the household work and helped for an hour in the afternoon, teaching sewing in the workroom. She did perfect work and was a more severe task-mistress than the teacher who had sight. By a provision of Dr. Howe's will an income was secured to her which made her independent. Two years before her death a jubilee celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of her arrival at the Institution was held. Phillips Brooks was among the speakers.

Dr. Howe's success in teaching her the use of language so she could speak by signs and also write was considered such an achievement that his reports of it were translated into several languages. In his last long report of her, Dr. Howe spoke of her unfailing good spirits, her affections and her enjoyment of life.

Achievements

• Laura Bridgman greatly succeeded in her education at the Perkins Institution for the Blind. 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. The novelist Charles Dickens met Bridgman on January of 1842, who was just 12 years old, during his first visit to the United States, and on his return to England he devoted a chapter of his American Notes (1842) to her story of “finger language” skills, her education, and her gregarious personality. Not long after, written letters and autographs from Bridgman became prized items throughout the English-speaking world.

Religion

Howe had intentionally kept from her all formal religious teaching but in 1862, during a visit at home, she had been baptized in the Baptist church.

Personality

A delicate child for a year and a half, at the age of two she had an attack of scarlet fever which left her with sight and hearing lost. For two years she was ill and feeble. As soon as she could walk, she began to explore the room and the house, to follow her mother and to imitate her in every way she could. She thus learned to sew and to knit.

Her thin stature and several periods in her life when she ate little caused her caregivers great concern, leading some contemporary scholars to suggest that Bridgman may have lived with anorexia nervosa.

Quotes from others about the person

• 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. "

Interests

• Laura lived her entire life at Perkins and spent much of her time knitting, sewing, cleaning and writing letters to friends.

Connections

Sister:

Collina F. Bridgman Simmons

1845–1934

mentor:

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe

Dr. Howe's achievement drew much attention, especially after author Charles Dickens visited the school in 1842 and enthusiastically described Bridgman's accomplishments in his "American Notes."

Sister :

Frances Collina Bridgman

1827–1832

Sister :

Mary C. Bridgman

1825–1832

Sister :

Mary A. Bridgman

1842–1859

mother :

Harmony Downer Bridgman

1804–1891

Brother :

John D. Bridgman

1834–1919

Brother :

Milo B. Bridgman

1838–1839

Father :

Daniel Bridgman

1800–1868

Friend:

Asa Tenney

Her closest friend was a kind, mentally impaired hired man of the Bridgmans, Asa Tenney, whom she credited with making her childhood happy.

Friend:

Anne Sullivan

Bridgman, always eager for someone to communicate with in sign language, befriended Anne Sullivan when they shared a cottage in the early 1880s.

References

• Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman: The Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl
• Child of the silent night
• Life and education of Laura Dewey Bridgman, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl.
• The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, The Original Deaf-Blind Girl
• Anatomical Observations on the Brain and Several Sense-Organs of the Blind Deaf-Mute, Laura Dewey Bridgman (Classic Reprint)
• Laura Bridgman;: The story of an opened door,
• Life and Education of L.D. Bridgman
• The Education of Laura Bridgman : First Deaf and Blind Person to Learn Language
• She Touched the World: Laura Bridgman, Deaf-Blind Pioneer