Thomas Braidwood (1715–1806) was a Scottish teacher, who founded Britain’s first school for deaf children, the Braidwood Academy for the Deaf and Dumb in 1760 in Edinburgh. While he was praised during his lifetime, his reputation took a dark turn from the nineteenth century onward, and, with the emergence of Deaf Studies in the 1960s, it became common in Deaf History works to depict him in a negative light: that is, as a secretive teacher who used oral methods of education, and who sought to create a monopoly of deaf education. This portrayal, however, has been contested: depictions of Braidwood in American and non-American scholarship conflicted regarding his role, the methods he used with the pupils, and his impact on the Deaf community. Through a historiographical analysis of American and non-American works, this article shows that American Deaf studies research has tended to overlook non-American studies in their works on Deaf history—restricting their narratives to binary and sometimes outdated interpretations in the process. This case study demonstrates that this tendency is a flaw within the field, which has been addressed by Deaf Studies scholars in the past, but which remains to this day. The persistence of traditional interpretations of Thomas Braidwood has shaped his historical memory, and reveals the necessity for Deaf Studies to be more interdisciplinary, address other countries’ contexts and avoid imposing American frameworks upon them, as well as place greater value on Deaf signed history and Deaflore.