Deaf Profiles: Laura C. Redden

Here’s Deaf Profiles, a new monthly strip! It currently runs in SIGNews. New strips will be posted as they become available.

Laura C. Redden had a very interesting life: She was mobile and travelled extensively on her own, unusual for a time when women were expected to have travel companions. Laura was a celebrity in her own time. Howard Glyndon, her nom de plume, was no secret.

Fortunately, Laura’s work is not lost to history, thanks in part to the scholarship of Judy Yaeger Jones. Gallaudet University Press has a collection of her poems, titled Sweet Bells Jangled. Deaf American Poetry also features a poem by her. Read more about Laura here.

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Transcript:

Laura C. Redden, a graduate of the Missouri School for the Deaf, was a poet. She sometimes wrote under the name Howard Glyndon.

She travelled widely, and met many famous people, including President Abraham Lincoln.

The first town in the United States named after a deaf person is Glyndon, Minnesota.