Julia Brace was the first deaf-blind person in the U.S. to receive an education. If this rings a bell, it’s because more than a year ago ago I wrote about a similar woman, Laura Bridgman, who was almost 30 years younger than Brace, but also deaf-blind, and who learned about to spell and read. Although Brace never learned to spell or read like Bridgman, she did learn to communicate with signs, as well as sew and do household chores, and it was her case that opened the doors for deaf-blind learning.
She was born in Connecticut in 1807 and lost her vision and hearing to typhus fever when she was five years old. She had already learned how to read and of course speak by the time she got sick, but a lack of communication caused her to go silent, and when she was 18 years old enrolled in the American School for the Deaf and that is where she met the doctor who would eventually educate Bridgman.
Not much information about her is available, and she seems to be mostly forgotten, and even overshadowed by other deaf-blind people, such as Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. Most of the notes online are about her behavior and education, all which were ‘normal’, which seems to have surprised most people back when she was alive. One thing that seems to be repeated over and over again is her lack of interest in religion and/or god, which was a constant concern of the people trying to convert her, to which I can only chuckle. No proselytizing here, please!
Although she seems to be mostly forgotten, those at Dartmouth College do indeed remember her due to an annual report gifted to their library by the doctor who treated her, who mentions her and their progress together. Now she is remembered as the woman who opened the doors to education for all deaf-blind people.
She died in 1860 and was buried in an unmarked grave in the West Hill Cemetery in Bloomfield, Connecticut.