High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, LL.D., (December 10, 1787 – September 10, 1851) was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the Deaf. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first institution for the education of the Deaf in North America, and he became its first principal. When opened in 1817, it was called the "American Asylum for Deaf-Mutes" in Connecticut, but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf.