The historical demography of the Martha’s Vineyard signing community

Abstract

The deaf population of Martha’s Vineyard has fascinated scholars for more than a century since Alexander Graham Bell’s research on the frequent occurrence of deafness there and since Groce’s book on the island’s signing community (Groce, N. E. (1985). Everyone here spoke sign language: Hereditary deafness on Martha’s Vineyard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.). In Groce’s work, and in that of subsequent scholars, the Vineyard signing community has often been portrayed as remote and outlying, having developed independently of mainland signing communities for roughly 133 years until 1825. We re-examine that interpretation in light of historical, demographic, and genealogical evidence covering the period 1692–2008. We argue that the Vineyard signing community began in Chilmark in 1785, 93 years later than previously thought, and that it had had a brief period of independent development, roughly 40 years, before becoming well connected, through deaf education, to the nascent New England signing community. We consider the implications of the Vineyard community’s history for our understanding of how village signing communities develop.

The Structure and Place of the ASL Signing Community in the Mid-nineteenth Century: The Hartford Gatherings of 1850 and 1854

“…For example, Ruby Mayhew of Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard attended the 1854 gathering together with her sister Lovey. Although Ruby never attended a school for the deaf, Lovey attended ASD from 1825 to 1831, and the women's brother Alfred did so from 1827 to 1830 (Power & Meier 2024). Josiah Smith and Nancy Pressey married in 1841.…”