At the age of 16 Alexander started to help teach young deaf mutes. He used his father’s system of ‘visible speech’and achieved amazing results. Sadly, around this time the brutal disease called the white plague, spread trough Britain and both Alexander’s brother died. As a result Alexander and his parents left the country and moved to Canada. He was teaching to a tribe of Mohawk Indians in a small Canadian town called Bretford, when the Boston Board of Education asked him to come and work in the USA at a new school for deaf mutes.