Pioneers in Deaf education
Well before state systems of special education existed, the Sisters of St. Joseph were quietly building one in St. Louis.
The six Sisters of St. Joseph who arrived in St. Louis from Lyon in 1836, came on a mission to help educate deaf children. In preparation, several members spent 2 years preparing for this mission by studying deaf instruction in France. Within a year, they founded the St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf (1837) — the first school for the deaf west of the Mississippi — laying the foundation for generations of inclusive Catholic education.
"They are ready for anything..."
In 1835, Félicité de Duras, Countess de la Rochejaquelein, an influential French noblewoman who greatly admired the Sisters of Saint Joseph, wrote to Bishop Rosati of St. Louis.
The Countess urged him to support her vision of sending the Sisters of St. Joseph to America:
“I would send six Sisters of St. Joseph to North America,” she wrote to Rosati, “with a view to their converting the savages, instructing the little ones, and educating and converting the children of the Protestants.”
But Bishop Rosati had other ideas…likely inspired by state-run schools for the deaf on the east coast, the bishop sought to establish the first Catholic institute for the deaf. Always “ready for anything,” (as the Countess described them in her letter) the Sisters of St. Joseph in Lyon began their own education. Although before the French Revolution, they ran a famous school for the deaf in Lyon, by the 1830s there were no longer any sisters familiar with the teaching methods. Two volunteers, Sister Celestine Pommerel and Postulant Julie Fournier, who later took the name Sister St. John, were sent to the city of Saint-Étienne to learn sign language from the Sisters of Saint Charles, the only community in the diocese in Lyon engaged in teaching the deaf. Meanwhile, the first six sisters made the journey to Saint Louis in 1836. One year later they were joined by the two sisters who had remained behind.
Although the Sisters of Saint Joseph would primarily work with deaf children and the children of German and Irish immigrants, the Countess’ numerous letters show that she never gave up her desire for them to prioritize evangelization among the Protestants and Native Americans.
The historian of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Sister Mary McGlone, writes that “Bishop Rosati’s concern for the deaf is unexplained, especially in light of the fact that in 1837, there were apparently no deaf children in the area near Carondelet or the city of St. Louis.”
The Sisters discovered their first pupil in the Poor House of Potosi, MO. Because she knew no signs and could not communicate her name, the sisters called her “Potosi.”
Among the sisters’ other early students, we only know the names of three others because they benefited from State funding: Emily Johnson and Mary Musdach of St. Louis, and Teresa Bernard of Florissant.
Undeterred by their apparent lack of pupils, the Sisters published this commercial bulletin in a local paper in 1837 to announce the opening of the first “Deaf and Dumb Asylum.” This advertisement served not only as a notice of the institution’s establishment but also as a strategic appeal to potential patrons.
Recognizing the prevalent anti-Catholic sentiment, the sisters explicitly assured the public of their commitment to religious neutrality, promising that “no attempt is made to bias the religious feelings of children to the prejudice of any denomination.”
They further emphasized the institution’s location in Carondelet, highlighting its “healthy” hilltop setting overlooking the river, a clear nod to the nineteenth-century concern over urban “miasma” and the perceived curative power of fresh, elevated air—a practice mirrored in the siting of tuberculosis asylums.
Lastly, the sisters’ European origins were prominently featured, capitalizing on the era’s tendency to associate European education with refinement.
For $120 yearly, the sisters would teach deaf students “all branches necessary to constitute a finished education.”
The earliest student roster dates to 1865, just around the close of the Civil War:
Bishop Rosati – together with several prominent St. Louis citizens – used his extensive political connections to generate state sponsorship for the sisters to continue their work with deaf children.
In the Summer of 1838, he and other civic leaders petitioned the Missouri Legislature for funding, which was granted on February 13, 1839. This “Act to Provide for the Education of Deaf and Dumb children, between the ages of eight and eighteen” allocated the sum of $2000 to pay for the tuition of deaf children under state care.
In this same session, the state legislature also approved a memorial to the Federal government, requesting the donation of land for the education of the “less favored brethren” – those deprived of hearing.
The federal government recognized the benefits of the services these sisters provided in the letter granting the memorial:
“Their success has been so great and their pupils have progressed so rapidly that it is manifest that funds properly applied in founding and sustaining an Asylum for the education of those unfortunate persons would be of great relief to them and advance the cause of humanity.”
– Memorial to the Congress of the United States, February 1839
