St. Stephen’s: Early Champion of America’s ‘Children of Silence’ [the Deaf], Part II
The welcome extended by the Diocese—especially under the galvanizing leadership of Bishop Stevens—and St. Stephen’s apparently reached an eager new flock. St. Stephen’s Parish Registers teem with Deaf activity in those years. I have over fourteen pages of transcribed entries. . . . Records identify the Deaf (or Deaf Mute) virtually throughout; where not, we know their status from their noted clergyman. What emerged is the other “lived” side of the Deaf movement (worshippers) that we can now grasp through actual names, ages, residences, and rites.
The first rites found after 1859 (the earliest illustrated here) were marriages in ASL of deaf couples, Benjamin Franklin Pickett with Sarah Elizabeth Bennett (November 1862) and John S. Bower with Annie E. Dottirmann (?) (February 1863). Rev. Gallaudet, who came quarterly from New York, celebrated these marriages himself. These two weddings were followed by many adult baptisms and confirmations by Rev. Gallaudet or his assistant until H.W. Syle was ordained and appointed assistant rector for the Deaf at St. Stephen’s in the late 1870s, before he founded All Souls’ and undertook a Deaf mission in Central Pennsylvania in the mid-1880s. St. Stephen’s repeatedly undertook the mission in Philadelphia when efforts failed to secure it permanently elsewhere (such as Calvary Episcopal Church Germantown). Clergy for the Deaf divided their time among several churches (and outside paying jobs!). One such clergyman, Rev. Francis Clerc, son of another vitally important Deaf advocate Laurent Clerc (deaf graduate of Epée’s school in Paris), appears regularly in the Registers as celebrant for St. Stephen’s Deaf rites while Warden of the Burd Orphan Asylum
Rev. Francis Clerc
Even with more resources and services elsewhere, St. Stephen’s remained in demand by the Deaf for major rites.
We can track individuals across their adult lives through their baptisms, confirmations, marriage, and funerals at St. Stephen’s. Washington Houston was baptized as an adult in March 1874 and married Hannah Elizabeth Franks, also deaf, the following year. They baptized their infant daughter Henrietta Eugenia at St. Stephen’s in February 1881, only to bury her months later. We see families, comprised of hearing and deaf, who celebrated religious landmarks together here: Van Courtlandts, Cullingsworths, Leisersohns, Purvises, Stevensons. We find networks among those who serve as witnesses or sponsors for others. Martin Curran Fortescue, married here in 1878, became a favored lay reader for Deaf burials at St. Stephen’s. Mrs. Mary Ann (also Maria Ann?) Paullin, wife of Charles Paullin, both deaf, was confirmed here in 1871 and served repeatedly as sponsor in other baptisms, including for one of the Purvis children. She went on to become active at All Souls’. We find Deaf living among the hearing throughout Philadelphia. Others lived at the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb which then stood near to the church at Broad and Pine (in what is now the main building of the University of the Arts)
We learn of individuals who became founding members of the National Association of the Deaf in 1880: Mrs. Mary Hamilton Rocap (née Parry), baptized at St. Stephen’s in January 1876 and confirmed in 1877, was listed, along with the above-mentioned Washington Houston, as a member of the Association that year.
Later reports claim that most of Philadelphia’s Deaf were of modest means. Some were possibly artisans. Is the Charles Paullin, cabinetmaker at 31 S. 6th St. listed in the 1855 Philadelphia Directory, our Mrs. Paullin’s deaf husband Charles? Is Martha Pancoast Martin, confirmed April 16, 1878, related to the prosperous Pancoasts of our congregation? M.C. Fortescue had an art collection; what did he do?
There are infinite stories to be ferreted out here. These data nonetheless reveal religious lives apparently formed in adulthood, living communities that probably existed before but that found reinforcement in worship together. And, sought out by the Diocese of Pennsylvania, entered the Episcopal fold.
I ponder this energetic first burgeoning of Philadelphia’s Episcopal deaf community that is now coming into view and wonder about now.
—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator