Introduction

Biography

Angeline was the daugh­ter of John Full­er and Sar­ah Ash­by, and wife of George E. Fisch­er (mar­ried May 25, 1887, Doug­las, Ne­bras­ka).

She be­came deaf in the spring of 1854, when she suf­fered whoop­ing cough and ty­phoid fe­ver.

In 1859, she ap­plied to the school for the deaf in Jack­son­ville, Il­li­nois. At age 18, she be­gan stu­dies at the Il­li­nois School for the Deaf. Due to her ear­li­er il­lness­es, she was in frail health, and spells of blind­ness and other ail­ments forced her to cut her edu­ca­tion short: she end­ed up at­tend­ing school for on­ly two years.

She went on to be­come a pub­lished poet, as well as an ad­vo­cate for the deaf. She raised funds for St. Ann’s Church for the Deaf in New York Ci­ty, and at­tend­ed the first con­ven­tion of the Na­tion­al As­so­cia­tion of the Deaf (where she met her fu­ture hus­band). She was al­so in­stru­men­tal in per­suad­ing Gal­lau­det Uni­ver­si­ty to start ac­cept­ing wo­men.

Her poems and articles appeared in a number of newspapers.

Works

• The Ven­ture (De­troit, Mi­chi­gan: J. N. Will­iams, 1883)