Evolution of Sign Language
“Everyone Spoke Sign”
Imagine a place where one out of every four people were deaf and no one was considered handicapped. Once upon a time such a placed existed. It was an isolated island off the coast of Massachusetts called Martha’s Vineyard. For nearly 300 years deafness was commonplace and noted in almost every family.
If you lived on Martha's Vineyard in the 18th century chances were that you or one of your family members were deaf. This deafness was believed to be inherited from early mainland settlers that descended from a small region in England. They settled in the up-town area of the Vineyard known as Chilmark. The first known deaf settler was Jonathan Lambert, a carpenter who moved from Cape Cod to Martha's Vineyard. Two of his seven children were deaf.
By 1710 immigration to Martha’s Vineyard virtually stopped and the island became self-sufficient. This created a rather isolated gene pool and families intermarried. Until this century 32 surnames accounted for 75 percent of the up-island population. The gene for deafness was passed on with increasing frequency until one out of four people were born deaf.
Due to the island’s isolation, the notion that deaf equaled handicapped never occurred to anyone. They developed a sign language based on their ancestor’s from England. This was the primary mode of communication and later became known as Martha’s Vineyard sign language (MVSL). Everyone, the deaf and hearing alike spoke sign. No one gave a thought to another person’s hearing or lack of hearing.
As the 18th century rolled into the 19th, educational views changed and it became common to school the deaf together. The first school for the deaf was in Hartford, Connecticut. Here they used a version of sign language derived from the French. The vineyard children added their colloquialisms and the combination of the two sign languages evolved into what is today known as American Sign Language (ASL).
As the Island became less self contained more children were sent off the island for their schooling thus many ended up staying on the mainland to live after they completed their education. Likewise the Vineyard grew more populated with people from the mainland. The genetic isolation ended, and the deaf population decreased. The last deaf Vineyard native passed away in the 1950’s.
