Backup of history.deaflds.org
Historically and popularly, the odyssey of Deaf Latter-day Saints has been considered to have begun in Ogden, Utah in 1917. In actuality, the Deaf Mormon story is woven into the same tapestry as the church’s narrative: upstate New York converts as early as 1832, over-plains wagon drivers and walkers, and early Intermountain West homesteaders, all participating in the faith right next door and with their fellow non-deaf congregants.
Inside the Mormon corridor exists a story of thriving ecclesiastical units, lay administered by incredibly capable Deaf men and women who contribute to the on-going Deaf Latter-day Saint story. Outside of the Wasatch Front, however, many Deaf Latter-day Saints are too often unaware that there have been others — frontiersmen, pioneers, immigrants — like themselves, those who have experienced and exercised faith in the Savior through a rich and storied visual language, even as the Church was maturing through the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries.
Our research and resulting projects represent a very small way that we are able to give back to the community that has carried, nurtured, taught, and embraced us for more than twenty years. The purpose of our work is to dig, to find, to obsess, to corroborate, to verify, and to otherwise unearth the stories and personalities of Deaf Latter-day Saints that “cry out from the dust.” To our Deaf friends, neighbors, and colleagues: we hope that you will analyze, relate, and retell these stories to the community. These stories are for you.