Thomas Jefferson Trist
Student and Teacher
1828-1890
PSD enrollment date: 1836-1847, with some years of absence
Thomas Jefferson Trist, a grandson of the third President of the United States of American, Thomas Jefferson Trist, was born in Monticello, Virginia in 1818. His parents were Virginia Jefferson and Philip Trist. He was born deaf. He was also a descendent of the family of Revolutionary War figure John Randolph of Roanoke, and possibly had a distant deaf cousin named St. George Randolph who was taught by Laurent Clerc in Paris.
His name sign was “the thumb + forefinger joined + tapping breast from shoulder downwards obliquely.
Trist attended the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD) and the New York School for the Deaf (NYSD) where he graduated with second highest honors in his class. He first came to PSD in 1836. He left for several months and he returned in the summer of 1837. He left again in June 1841 for a trip to France. He returned to school in the fall of 1842 to complete his education there.
In 1851, when he was in New York School for the Deaf, he had an accident. While walking on the Harlem railroad track he was knocked down by a train and sustained serious injuries to his face and head. He recovered and was the only person known to survive after such an incident.
In 1856, Trist returned to PSD as a teacher, staying for 35 years.
In 1857, Trist married Ellen Lyman of Connecticut. Rev. Dr. Thomas Gallaudet officiated at the New York City ceremony. Trist later married Sophia Knabe, a teacher of the PSD. (The reason for marrying again is unknown) He had no children with either wife.
Trist was involved with the religious works. He helped in organizing St. Ann Church for the Deaf in 1853. Later he supported Rev. Henry Winter Syle and Rev. Francis Clerc in the Episcopal missions to the Deaf in Philadelphia.
Trist was a charter member of Clerc Literacy Association (CLA) in Philadelphia. It was founded in 1865, the oldest literary club of the deaf in America. He was active in the early conventions of the American Instructors of the Deaf. He was an orator of the PSD’s 50th year anniversary.
Trist was one of the first Board Members of the Pennsylvania Society for the Advancement of the Deaf for three years beginning in 1881.
The officers and teachers of the school eulogized him as a " man of high culture, intelligence, refinement, and moral worth, and a true Christian in his daily life and deportment.”
Contributing: Reginald L. Boyd
April 1993
Revised on March 2002