Saturday, October 4, 2014

First ordained deaf person

It was on this date (Oct 14) in 1884 that 38-year-old Henry Winter Syle became the first deaf person to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and the first to to be ordained in any protestant denomination. Born to Missionary parents in Shanghai, China, Syle lost hearing at an early age to a scarlet fever infection. He was a student of Thomas Gallaudet who attended Connecticut's Trinity College, St. John's College in Cambridge, and Yale. . Syle began a congregation for the deaf four years later (1888) which he lead until his death in 1890, just two years later at the age of 44.