Louis Braille - An Inventor in Darkness

There are some adaptive systems that are so well-known to the modern world that we cannot imagine a time without them. Braille, the raised-dot system of writing used primarily by those with visual impairments, could be classified as such. It is so ubiquitous that we forget the man it is named for, the creative and intelligent man who shared his gifts to improve his world. Though it took almost a century for it to be globally adopted, Braille has opened paths of knowledge and communication to untold numbers.

Portrait of Louis as an adult

Charles Proteus Steinmetz - Wizard of Schenectady

There are names that are well-known in the world of inventors and science, such as Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla. One of their contemporaries was just as influential, if not more, though his is not a household name. It is because of him, Charles Steinmetz, that we have the electrical advances of the last century. He, known as the "Wizard of Schenectady," the "Modern Jove," and "The Thunderer," who called himself a "queer, gnome-like figure," was the father of electrical engineering.

Charles as an adult

Chang & Eng Bunker - The Siamese Twins

This post travels back to the age of "freak shows." Fair warning, this will be a running theme in this blog. It is a tragic but important part of disability and physical differences in the not-too-distant past. Honestly, an entire blog could be devoted to the individuals who performed in these shows (there's one I found that gave me many post ideas: The Human Marvels). This story is of a famous set of twins who have an incredibly unique story that involves race, fame, ability, marriage, children, and slavery in the American South. They are the origin of the term "Siamese twins."

Chang & Eng as adults

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

 

Thomas Wiggins - An Enslaved Prodigy

This is a post I have been putting off writing for two reasons. First, it hurts my heart. I am a helper, a nurturer, an empath. Knowing this man's story and how he was exploited for his entire life is difficult to sit with. Second, it opens the floodgates. Many of the stories of disability in the nineteenth century take place in "freak shows" and on vaudeville circuits. There are many of these on my post ideas list. This was merely the first.

However, we can't sugarcoat the past. These people truly lived and their stories deserve to be told in their entirety. Yes, Thomas Wiggins was an incredibly talented musician and yes, he and his family was taken advantage of through the system of slavery, institutional racism, and abusing the legal system. All of the aspects of his story are important and I hope you enjoy learning more about "Blind Tom."

Tom as an adult