American Sign Language has a long history in the United States. It goes back almost 200 years, to 1817, when a minister named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet brought Laurent Clerc, a teacher of the Deaf* (who was also Deaf himself) from France to the United States to found the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. Clerc brought French Sign Language, which had been developing at schools for the Deaf there since the 1760s, and in Hartford it mingled with various home signs the students brought with them, as well as the sign language of Martha's Vineyard (where there was a high proportion of genetic deafness).