Although this early U.S. president was distantly related to the Bolling family, which had several deaf members, he rejected a suggestion to sponsor or support a school for the deaf in his home state. Who was he?

Answer:
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). It is one of the ironies of history that he had such a hostile view. When he was invited to move John Braidwood’s oral school from Cobbs to Charlottesville and make it part of the University of Virginia, which he had founded in 1819, he replied that he had no interest in supporting “a mere charity.” (He didn’t consider education of the deaf in the same intellectual caliber as education of the hearing.) The Virginia School for the Deaf was founded at Staunton 18 years after Jefferson’s death. He played no role in its establishment.