With high school as an introduction, my serious education in American Sign Language began with the ASL classes in College and University. Deaf History was now part of the lessons as learning a new language also involves studying the history of the culture that created it. A single author did not create American Sign Language. ASL grew and developed with the deaf students and teaching staff of the first schools for the deaf, as the language continues to grow and evolve with the deaf culture that uses it now. If I wanted my dictionary to be a resource for ASL Study, it also had to include deaf history with the collection of ASL words. The introduction to my dictionary covers the basic history of American Sign Language in the United States and Canada. I collected a list of famous figures in Deaf History, researched and studied each one, then created short bios, highlighting their importance in deaf culture. Spread across the pages, I also placed the index listing of these bios on the Deaf History page with links to their location. The image for the page’s header is of the three catalysts to ASL creation, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Alice Cogswell, and Laurent Marie Clerc. I was also lucky enough to come across a brilliant quote from Bilingual researcher Colin Baker.
