Speech-Language Pathology/Stuttering/Famous People Who Stutter/More Stutterers in History

Cotton Mather (1663-1728) found that fasting and prayers failed to affect his stuttering, but speaking in a &quot;drawling&#133;little short of Singing&quot; enabled him to become a Puritan preacher. He later prosecuted the Salem witch trials.

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was a German Jewish philosopher who began the period of European Jewish enlightenment, and advocated assimilation.

Nurse Clara Barton (1821-1912) was the Civil War &quot;angel of the battlefield&quot; and founder of the American Red Cross.

John Slaughter (1841-1922) was a member of the Texas Rangers, leading daring pursuits of outlaw gangs. In 1886 he was elected sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, with a mandate to clean up crime in Tombstone, after Wyatt Earp's 1881 shoot-out. &quot;Slaughter, with penetrating black eyes, was only 5 feet 6 and often stuttered. But he wore a pearl-handled .44 and carried a 10-gauge, double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun, 'which was an equalizer.'&quot;

A brochure from the Stuttering Foundation of America 16 Famous People Who Stutter features well-known and successful individuals who stutter. This inspiring brochure is especially useful to raise awareness during Stuttering Awareness Week in May. A PDF of the brochure can be downloaded at www.stutteringhelp.org.


 * 1) Bobrick, Benson. Knotted Tongues. New York: Simon&amp;Schuster, 1995
 * 2) UPI news story.


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