author
b. 1858
A deaf writer, printer, and editor from Illinois, he wrote lively popular history and also documented the lives of prominent deaf Americans. His work moves easily between Abraham Lincoln anecdotes and a deeper record of deaf community life in the late 19th century.
by J. E. (James Ernst) Gallaher
Born in Girard, Illinois, on February 4, 1858, James Ernst Gallaher lost his hearing after an illness when he was seven years old. He attended the Illinois School for the Deaf from 1868 to 1877, where he studied printing and graduated as valedictorian.
Printing became the foundation of his career. After school he worked in publishing, and his surviving books show a wide range of interests: Best Lincoln Stories, Tersely Told (1898), a brisk collection of Abraham Lincoln material, and Representative Deaf Persons of the United States of America (1898), which gathered portraits and sketches of accomplished deaf Americans.
Gallaher also remained closely tied to deaf civic and cultural life. He wrote about the Chicago Pas-a-Pas Club in a 1907 commemorative volume, and a period profile in The Silent Worker presents him as an energetic figure in the deaf press and community. Clear biographical details beyond these points are hard to confirm from the sources reviewed, so this portrait is necessarily partial.