Laurent Clerc

Louis Laurent Marie Clerc was a French teacher called The Apostle of the Deaf in America by generations of American deaf people. He was taught by Abbe Sicard, at the famous school for the Deaf in Paris, Institution Nationale des SourdsMuets. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he cofounded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Hartford Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb on April 15, 1817 in the old Bennets City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently renamed the American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to its present site. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America.

Born December 26, 1785 in La BalmelesGrottes, Isre, a village on the northeastern edge of Lyon to JosephFranois Clerc and Marielisabeth Candy in the small village of La Balme where his father was the mayor, Laurent Clercs home was a typical bourgeois household. When he was a year old, Clerc, while momentarily unattended, fell from a chair into the hearth, suffering a blow to the head and sustaining a permanent scar on the right side of his face below his ear. Clercs family believed his deafness and inability to smell were caused by this accident, but Clerc later wrote that he was not certain and that he may have been born deaf and without the ability to smell or taste. The facial scar was later the basis for his name sign, the U hand shape stroked twice downward along the right cheek. Clercs name sign would become the best known and most recognizable name sign in American deaf history and Clerc became the most renowned deaf person in American history.

Source: Wikipedia