Caroline Yale

Caroline Ardelia Yale (September 29, 1848 – July 2, 1933 ) was an American inventor and educator who revolutionized the teaching of hearing-impaired students. A collaborator of Alexander Graham Bell, her phonetic system became the most widely used in America. She was a member of the Yale family, and a distant relative of Sarah Yale, the mother-in-law of William Henry and Samuel Henry, grandfather and uncle of abolitionist Laura Spelman, wife of John D. Rockefeller, as well as of another uncle of Mrs. Rockefeller. Caroline's brother, John Lyman Yale, a manufacturer, was a neighbor of Grace Coolidge, later First Lady of the United States as wife of U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, and the Yales were friends of the Coolidges as Grace was sent to live with them as a child. Captain John L. Yale was a member of the 13th Vermont Infantry Regiment and the 17th Vermont Infantry Regiment and fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and at the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War. She became the mother of John Yale Crouter, director of the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, and June Yale Chittick, daughter-in-law of Dr. Chittick, head of the Vermont State Hospital.

Caroline later moved to Williston, Vermont, and was educated at home by tutors with the support of her parents. Her father was the President of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf. She also attended schools in Williston, and from 1866 to 1868 she attended Mount Holyoke Seminary (which became Mount Holyoke College).

After completing her education she taught in schools in Brandon, Vermont, and Williston, Vermont, until 1870, when she began to work at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 1873 she achieved the rank of associate principal, staying in that position until 1886, when she succeeded Harriet B. Rogers as the principal of the school. Although Harriet Burbank Rogers was the initial founder of the Clarke Institution, it was Caroline Yale who emerged as the institutional leader of the oral movement.

Caroline Yale worked for 63 years at the Clarke School for Hearing and Speech, including 36 years as principal.

Later life

Caroline Ardelia's teaching methods became so widespread that by 1933 all but two of the 200 schools for the hearing impaired in America employed her oral teaching methods. The aim was to build an international reputation for the institution. They raised 2 million dollars which were given to Caroline Ardelia, who was stuck in a wheelchair as the school's retired principal in her late years.