Sophia Kindrick Alcorn was an educator who invented the Tadoma method of communication with people who are deaf and blind.
16 Facts About Sophia Alcorn
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Sophia Alcorn advocated for the rights of people with disabilities and upon retiring from her long career in teaching, she worked with the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Sophia Kindrick Alcorn was born the youngest of seven children of James Walker and Sophie Ann Alcorn in Stanford, Kentucky, on August 3,1883.
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Annie Alcorn was the eldest of her siblings, marrying in November 1899 James N Saunders who practiced law in her father's office.
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Sophia Alcorn practiced law with his father and became a popular circuit judge from the 1930s-50s.
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Sophia Alcorn moved to Morganton, North Carolina to teach for one year at the North Carolina School for the Deaf, then returned to Kentucky, teaching at the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville, Kentucky.
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Sophia Alcorn taught there from 1909 to 1920, and it was here that she first developed the Tadoma method.
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Sophia Alcorn began teaching at the South Dakota School for the Deaf and worked with Tad for four years, perfecting her system of what she called the Tadoma Tactile-Sense Method.
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Sophia Alcorn pioneered a system of visual symbols, first using pipe cleaners to easily create the shapes.
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Sophia Alcorn named her method Tadoma after these two children: Tad and Oma.
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Hall took over the education of Tad Chapman when Sophia Alcorn left for Detroit to research the use of vibration techniques in teaching language and speech to sighted deaf children.
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Sophia Alcorn taught at the Oral School in Cincinnati from 1927 to 1929.
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When she retired, Sophia Alcorn returned to Stanford where she became a member of the Stanford Woman's Club and served as the first woman elder in the Stanford Presbyterian Church.
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The critical need for trained teachers drew Sophia Alcorn to begin work with the American Foundation for the Blind.
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Sophia Alcorn worked actively with the AFB until her death on November 28,1967.
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Sophia Alcorn was buried at the Buffalo Spring Cemetery in Stanford.