Elizabeth Jefferson - A Mystery

The title for this post says it all: this colonial woman was, indeed, a mystery. She is most often listed as an interesting factoid about her very famous brother, a la "Wow, did you know Thomas Jefferson had a disabled sister? Anyway..." Finding information on her was difficult but worth the work. Sadly, I could find no paintings or words of hers, so we do not know what she looked like or her own perceptions. She is only a snapshot of being disabled in colonial America, but I hope you enjoy her story.

Shadwell Plantation House

Princess Alexandrine of Prussia - Hope for Peace

When I am brainstorming post ideas, I often search for "famous people with _____." In this case, I wanted to know more about Down Syndrome. Because so many people with this were put into institutions and never spoken of again, it can be very difficult to find these stories. Every so often, though, an influential family had a child with Down Syndrome and chose to/had the resources to care for them at home. This is the case with our story today.

Alexandrine as a toddler

 

Allen Jay - The Peacemaker

In my regular life, I am a speech-language pathologist. Though I work in Early Intervention, meaning I help toddlers learn to talk, this career involves many areas. This includes voice, fluency (stuttering), feeding and swallowing, speech sounds, social skills, cognitive skills, and even more. In my job, I have had one client so far who had a repaired cleft palate. Luckily, my school had a specific class focused on just cleft lip and palate management and rehabilitation. Like most of medicine, this area has come a long way in just the last few decades. Comparing my client's experience in 2017 to my uncle's experience in the 1950s is completely different, much less looking back at the 1800s. I came across Allen Jay's story as a child in a picture book (Allen Jay and the Underground Railroad, 1993) and it has stuck with me ever since.

Allen, 1910