Saints of the Week: Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle
9/3/2025
Rev. Thomas Gallaudet
1822 - 1902
Rev. Henry W. Syle
1846 – 1890
Thomas Gallaudet was born in 1822, in Hartford, Connecticut. His mother, Sophia was deaf and his father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, was the founder of the West Hartford School for the Deaf, the principal institution for educating the deaf in the United States from 1806-1857 (the year Gallaudet College was founded in Washington, DC). The elder Gallaudet intended to become a priest but became an educator of the deaf instead. The younger Thomas also aspired to the priesthood but did not do so until after his father persuaded him to first “work for a short while as a teacher of the deaf.” He did and was exceedingly successful at it. While doing so, he also met and married Elizabeth Budd, who was deaf. Eventually ordained in 1851, the next year Gallaudet established St. Ann's Church in New York, primarily to serve the needs of the deaf community; services were primarily in sign language. As a result, congregations for the deaf began to appear in other major cities. Alternatively, some congregations that were mostly hearing, hired parishioners who were adept at signing to stand near the front to ensure deaf parishioners also benefitted from the services. Gallaudet was also instrumental in the work of the Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd, a group of women engaged in urban ministry in New York City. Gallaudet died 27 August 1902. He is considered the Father of Episcopal missionary work among the hearing impaired.
One of Gallaudet’s top students and most loyal parishioners was Henry Winter Style. Deaf from an early age, he was born in Shanghai, China and had successively attended Trinity College (Hartford, CT), St John's (Cambridge, England) and Yale. Gallaudet encouraged him to become a priest. In 1875, he moved to Philadelphia, where he prepared for ordained ministry. Encouraged by Gallaudet and supported by Bishop William Bacon Stevens of Pennsylvania, against the opposition of many who believed that the impairment of one of the senses was an impediment to ordination, he was nonetheless ordained deacon on 8 October 1876 and priest on 14 Oct 1883, making him the first deaf person to be so ordained in the Episcopal Church. In 1888 he built Philadelphia’s All Souls' Church for the Deaf, the first Episcopal church constructed especially for hearing-impaired persons, and died 6 January 1890.
The Episcopal Church celebrates their ministry August 27.
