Laura Dewey Lynn Bridgman (December 21, 1829 – May 24, 1889) is known as the first deaf-blind American child to gain a significant education in the English language, fifty years before the more famous Helen Keller.[1] Bridgman was left blind and deaf at the age of two after suffering a bout of scarlet fever. She was educated at the Perkins Institution for the Blind where, under the direction of Samuel Gridley Howe, she learned to read and communicate using braille and the manual alphabet developed by Charles-Michel de l'Épée.[2]