Taken from: Fay, Edward Allen, ed. American Annals of the Deaf, vol.
37. Washington, D.C.: Convention of
American Instructors of the Deaf, 1892.
pp. 32-34.
JONATHAN
WHIPPLE.
In an article in the last number of the Annals, Jonathan Whipple, the pioneer advocate of articulation and speech-reading for the deaf, is spoken of as ignorant and obscure. This characterization seems to me somewhat misleading, and I shall esteem it a privilege if I may be allowed space in your pages to pay a brief tribute to the memory of a man eminent for the robust virtues of his character, and for an intelligence which grasped the experiences of life and transmuted them into the materials of which education is made.
Jonathan Whipple was a member of the sect known as Rogerene Quakers, and was trained in the strict discipline of that profession. Great moral principles, which have scarcely yet fixed themselves in the general conscience of mankind, were his by right of birth. The vitalizing and educative effect of such principles will not be called in question. He was early interested in the anti-slavery reform, and was a life-long advocate of temperance and universal peace. In 1868 he helped convene the first Annual Grove Peace Meeting, at Mystic, Connecticut. This meeting has since grown into a convention of thousands of persons, and lasts several days. On the organization of the Connecticut branch of the Universal Peace Union he was made its president, and held the office until his death.
His correspondence was wide and voluminous. He is said to have written more than three hundred personal letters to solicit subscriptions for the Voice of Peace-now the Peacemaker--the official organ of the Universal Peace Union. This journal was for a time published by the Whipple family, Zerah C. Whipple and his sister Content, grandchildren of Jonathan Whipple, acting as its editors. In passing, I will add that Content Whipple, who died some years ago, was the author of two excellent books, “The Newell Boys” and “The Prescots,” and of numerous articles published in the newspaper press of the period.
The letters of Jonathan Whipple were epistles of counsel, encouragement, and admonition. Among his correspondents were the late Adin Ballou, of Hopedale, Massachusetts, and Alfred H. Love, of Philadelphia, president of the Universal Peace Union.
Besides his other labors, Jonathan Whipple taught for years the private school formerly maintained by the sect of which he was a member.
In person, the subject of this sketch was tall, spare, muscular, with dark eyes, strong features, and close, curling black hair mingled with silver. His manner was dignified; at times reserved, and even austere. He possessed a powerful penetrative voice, which could modulate itself to a cadence of gentle and pathetic sweetness. He was singularly emotional, and could hardly address a religious assembly without being moved to tears. He was a most graphic, story-teller. I once heard him relate an experience of his in reclaiming a drunkard, and was so impressed with the moral and dramatic interest of the story that I wrote it down almost word for word as it fell from his lips and had it published in a local paper. His hospitality was well-nigh boundless. His home was an asylum for the re-former, of whatever creed or color. The sunny, gambrel-roofed farm-house, with its dormer windows, its thrifty screen of woodbine on the southern wall, and the plain but substantial cheer inside, was a very haven of rest to the weary wanderer.
It will be seen that Jonathan Whipple’s work for the deaf was but one of many interests and activities. His belief in the... latent power of speech and susceptibility of speech-culture possessed by the deaf met with determined opposition But he lived to see this belief become a widely-recognized fact and to reap, in the Home School for the Deaf, established by the united efforts of himself, his son, and his grandson, a seed-harvest, as the reward of his labors in this field.
IDA WHIPPLE BENHAM,
Mystic, Conn.
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