Bridgman
Bridgman names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Bridgman LAURA, an American blind mute
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LAURA, an American blind mute, born in Hanover, N. H., Dec. 21, 1829. She was a bright, intelligent child, but at two years of age both sight and hearing were entirely destroyed by fever, but she learned to find her way about the house and neighborhood, and even learned to sew and to knit a little. In 1839 Dr. Howe, of Boston, undertook her care and education at the deaf and dumb school. The first attempt was to give her a knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which she could interchange thoughts with others. Then she learned to read embossed letters by touch; next, embossed words were attached to different articles, and she learned to asso- the Pope gives his decision on some matciate each word with its corresponding signed from the army and setucu Trenton, N. J., joining the John A. Roebling's Sons Co. In 1899 he was chosen mayor of Trenton, in 1901 be- Board of came a member of the State Education, and in 1902 State Treasurer. the United States He was elected to Senate in 1907, but was defeated in 1912. He died in the following year.
Bridgman FREDERIC ARTHUR, an Am American artist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FREDERIC ARTHUR, an Am American artist, born in Tuskegee, Ala., Nov. 10, 1847. He studied at the Brooklyn Art School and National Academy of Design, and was a pupil of J. L. Gérôme, and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Elected to the American Academy of Design 1891, Chairman American Art Department, Paris Exposition 1900, Officer Legion of Honor 1907. Is noted for Oriental and archæological figure pieces. Among his notable paintings ngs are "Procession in Honor of Isis" and "The Bocher-Biskra."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 as though Laura Bridgman's education were still under way, and its text (garbled here by the printer) never mentions that she had died at the Perkins Institution in 1889, aged 59, having spent almost her whole life there. Her fame was already being overtaken by Helen Keller, who was taught by Anne Sullivan, herself a Perkins pupil who knew Bridgman personally; today Bridgman is usually introduced as Keller's forerunner rather than in her own right, the first deaf-blind person known to have been taught language in English. Frederic Arthur Bridgman, alive and honoured when the entry was written, died in France in 1928; his Orientalist scenes such as "Procession in Honor of Isis" went out of critical favour for decades before the market and museums took up nineteenth-century Orientalism again in the later twentieth century.
Written for this edition, 2026.