Braidwood, John [III]

Hearing; son of John Braidwood (I!) and so also known as John Braidwood jr.; grandson of Thomas Braidwood (I) (q.v.). Apparently a profligate person by nature and a failure in the deaf education business in Great Britain. After 2 years running the family school for the deaf in Edinburgh and leaving it with bad debts, he moved to America, hoping to found a school for the deaf there without complications from his disapproving family. After failed efforts to start classes for the deaf in New York and Baltimore, became a family tutor to Colonel William Bolling in 1812, running a private tutoring class in Col. Bolling's home, Cobbs Manor Plantation, in Goochland County, VA. This class became a formal school, opening on March 1, 1815, but closed in the autumn of 1816 when Braidwood abandoned it due to his inability to hold on to his money. It was reopened a year later, with John Braidwood in association with a clergyman, Rev. Kirkpatrick, in Manchester, VA. Additional students were recruited. The clergyman relocated the school in 1819 to Cumberland County; Braidwood abandoned it again, dying of alcoholism in Manchester, where he was buried.