GALLAUDET, THOMAS HOPKINS (1787-1851), American educator of the deaf and dumb, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of French Huguenot ancestry, on the 10th of December 1787. He graduated at Yale in 1805, where he was a tutor from 1808 to 1810. Subsequently he studied theology at Andover, and was licensed to preach in 1814, but having determined to abandon the ministry and devote his life to the education of deaf mutes, he visited Europe in 1815-1816, and studied the methods of the abbé Sicard in Paris, and of Thomas Braidwood (1715-1806) and his successor Joseph Watson (1765-1829) in Great Britain. Returning to the United States in 1816, he established at Hartford, Connecticut, with the aid of Laurent Clerc (1785-1869), a deaf mute assistant of the abbé Sicard, a school for deaf mutes, in support of which Congress, largely through the influence of Henry Clay, made a land grant, and which Gallaudet presided over with great success until ill-health compelled him to retire in 1830. It was the first institution of the sort in the United States, and served as a model for institutions which were subsequently established. He died at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 5th of September 1851.
There are three accounts of his life, one by Henry Barnard, Life, Character and Services of the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet (Hartford, 1852); another by Herman Humphrey (Hartford, 1858), and a third (and the best one) by his son Edward Miner Gallaudet (1888).
His son, Thomas Gallaudet (1822-1902), after graduating at Trinity College in 1842, entered the Protestant Episcopal ministry, settled in New York City, and there in 1852 organized St Anne’s Episcopal church, where he conducted services for deaf mutes. In 1872 he organized and became general manager of the Church mission to deaf mutes, and in 1885 founded the Gallaudet home for deaf mutes, particularly the aged, at Wappingers Falls, near Poughkeepsie, New York.
Another son, Edward Miner Gallaudet (b. 1837), was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 3rd of February 1837, and graduated at Trinity College in 1856. After teaching for a year in the institution for deaf mutes founded by his father at Hartford, he removed with his mother, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet (1798-1877), to Washington, D.C., where at the request of Amos Kendall (1789-1869), its founder, he organized and took charge of the Columbia Institution for the deaf and dumb, which received support from the government, and of which he became president. This institution was the first to furnish actual collegiate education for deaf mutes (in 1864 it acquired the right to grant degrees), and was successful from the start. The Gallaudet College (founded in 1864 as the National Deaf Mute College and renamed in 1893 in honour of Thomas H. Gallaudet) and the Kendall School are separate departments of this institution, under independent faculties (each headed by Gallaudet), but under the management of one board of directors.
GALLE, or Point de Galle, a town and port of Ceylon on the south-west coast. It was made a municipality in 1865, and divided into the five districts of the Fort, Callowelle, Galopiadde, Hirimbure and Cumbalwalla. The fort, which is more than a mile in circumference, overlooks the whole harbour, but is commanded by a range of hills. Within its enclosure are not only several government buildings, but an old church erected by the Dutch East India Company, a mosque, a Wesleyan chapel, a hospital, and a considerable number of houses occupied by Europeans. The old Dutch building known as the queen’s house, or governor’s residence, which dated from 1687, was in such a dilapidated state that it was sold by the governor, Sir William Gregory, in 1873. Elsewhere there are few buildings of individual note, but the general style of domestic architecture is pleasant and comfortable, though not pretentious. One of the most delightful features of the place is the profusion of trees, even within the town, and along the edge of the shore—suriyas, palms, coco-nut trees and bread-fruit trees. The ramparts towards the sea furnish fine promenades. In the harbour deep water is found close to the shore, and the outer roads are spacious; but the south-west monsoon renders entrance difficult, and not unfrequently drives vessels from their moorings.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and the construction of a breakwater at Colombo, leading to the transfer of the mail and most of the commercial steamers to the capital of the island, seriously diminished the prosperity of Galle. Although a few steamers still call to coal and take in some cargo, yet the loss of the Peninsular and Oriental and other steamer agencies reduced the port to a subordinate position; nor has the extension of the railway from Colombo, and beyond Galle to Matara, very much improved matters. The tea-planting industry has, however, spread to the neighbourhood, and a great deal is done in digging plumbago and in growing grass for the distillation of citronella oil. The export trade is chiefly represented by coco-nut oil, plumbago, coir yarn, fibre, rope and tea. In the import trade cotton goods are the chief item. Both the export and import trade for the district, however, now chiefly passes through Colombo. Pop. (1901) 37,165.
Galle is mentioned by none of the Greek or Latin geographers, unless the identification with Ptolemy’s Avium Promontorium or Cape of Birds be a correct one. It is hardly noticed in the native chronicles before 1267, and Ibn Batuta, in the middle of the 14th century, distinctly states that Kali—that is, Galle—was a small town. It was not till the period of Portuguese occupation that it rose to importance. When the Dutch succeeded the Portuguese they strengthened the fortifications, which had been vigorously defended against their admiral, Kosten; and under their rule the place had the rank of a commandancy. In the marriage treaty of the infanta of Portugal with Charles II. of England it was agreed that if the Portuguese recovered Ceylon they were to hand over Galle to the English; but as the Portuguese did not recover Ceylon the town was left to fall into English hands at the conquest of the island from the Dutch in 1796. The name Galle is derived from the Sinhalese galla, equivalent to “rock”; but the Portuguese and Dutch settlers, being better fighters than philologists, connected it with the Latin gallus, a cock, and the image of a cock was carved as a symbol of the town in the front of the old government house.