Deaf History - Martha's Vineyard
If you could create a deaf utopia, what would it be like?
By Jamie Berke, About.com
Everyone would communicate in sign language, both deaf and hearing. Many, if not most, children would be born deaf.
Deaf Utopia Did Exist
There actually was such a place once. It was an isolated island off the Massachusetts coast - Martha's Vineyard. Some early Vineyard settlers carried a gene for deafness (the first known deaf one was Jonathan Lambert, 1694), and over years of marriage, generation after generation was born with hearing loss. At one point, one in four children was born deaf! There were so many deaf people on the Vineyard (most deaf lived in Chilmark) that residents developed a sign language, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). MVSL later merged with mainland signs to form American Sign Language.
High Deaf Population
Some censuses taken of 19th century Vineyard population reveal the extent of deafness. In 1817, two families had deaf members, with a total of 7 deaf. Just a few years later, by 1827 there were 11 deaf. The 1850 Chilmark census identified 17 deaf out of 141 households, in the Hammett, Lambert, Luce, Mayhew, Tilton, and West families. In 1855, it was 17 plus 4 in nearby Tisbury. The 1880 Chilmark census had 19 deaf in 159 households. New deaf families in the 1880 census included the Nobles and the Smiths. To put this into perspective, compared to the mainland U.S. where the frequency of deafness was 1 in almost 6000, on the Vineyard it was as high as 1 in 155 (1 in 25 in Chilmark, and 1 in 4 in the Chilmark town of Squibnocket).
High Acceptance of Sign Language
Sign language was so accepted on the Vineyard that a newspaper marveled in 1895 at the way the spoken and signed languages were used so freely and easily by both deaf and hearing residents. People moving to Chilmark had to learn sign language in order to live in the community. Deafness was so common that some hearing residents actually thought it was a contagious disease. Deafness was never considered to be a handicap.
Gradual Decline in Deaf Population
These intermarriages persisted and the deaf population of Chilmark and the rest of the Vineyard continued to propagate. It would have kept growing if not for the growth of deaf education on the mainland. As deaf Vineyard children attended schools off-island, they tended to settle off-island, married mainland mates, and gradually the deaf Vineyard population died out. The last deaf Vineyard native passed away in the 1950s.
Books and Other Resources
The history of the deaf society on Martha's Vineyard has fascinated scholars and resulted in the publication of the book: Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard 
. This book traces Vineyard deafness to an area of Britain's Kent County called the Weald. In addition, these other resources are available:
An undated (appears to be mid-1990s) 15-page research paper by Robert Mather and Linda McIntosh at Tufts University, "The Deaf of Martha's Vineyard." The bibliography cites two 1981 articles in the Duke's County Intelligencer, respectively titled "The Island's Hereditary Deaf: A Lesson in Human Understanding," and "Chilmark Deaf: Valued Citizens." Also included in the bibliography was an 1895 Boston Sunday Herald article, "Mark of Chilmark, Deaf and Dumb in the Village of Squibnocket." A six-page Spring 2001 article, "A Silent Culture with a Strong Voice," from the Boston University alumni magazine, Bostonia. The article briefly mentions the efforts of an alumnus (Joan Poole Nash, now a deaf education teacher) to record on videotape examples of MVSL demonstrated by her great grandmother and grandfather. In March 1999, Yankee magazine published the article, "The Island That Spoke by Hand."
Hereditary deafness and sign language
A high rate of hereditary deafness was documented in Martha's Vineyard for almost two centuries. The island's deaf heritage cannot be traced to one common ancestor and is thought to have originated in the Weald, a region in the British county of Kent, prior to immigration. Researcher Nora Groce estimates that by the late 1800s, 1 in 155 people on the Vineyard was born deaf (0.7 percent), almost 20 times the estimate for the nation at large (1 in 2,730, or 0.04 percent).[12]
Mixed marriages between deaf and hearing spouses comprised 65% of all deaf marriages in the late nineteenth century, (higher than the U.S. average of 20%)[13] and Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was commonly used by hearing residents as well as deaf ones until the middle of the twentieth century.[14] This allowed deaf residents to smoothly integrate into society.
In the twentieth century, tourism became a mainstay in the island economy. However, jobs in tourism were not as deaf-friendly as fishing and farming had been. Consequently, as intermarriage and further migration joined the people of Martha's Vineyard to the mainland, the island community more and more resembled the wider community there.
The last deaf person born into the island's sign language tradition, Katie West, died in 1952, but a few elderly residents were able to recall MVSL as recently as the 1980s when research into the language began.
The Weald (pronounced /wiÉ™ld/) is the name given to a physiographic area in South East England situated between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It should be regarded in three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the centre; the clay "Low Weald" periphery; and the Greensand Ridge which stretches around the north and west of the Weald and includes the Weald's highest points. The Weald was once a vast forest covering this area. The name, Old English in origin, signifies woodland, which still applies today: scattered farms and villages betray The Weald‘s past, often in their names.
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