Chilmark's Deaf and Signing Community: A New History
Saturday, September 30 at 3:00 PM: Chilmark’s Deaf and Signing Community: A New History with Justin M. Power, Richard P. Meier, and Linsey Lee
In 1785 Benjamin and Lydia Mayhew of Squibnocket, here in Chilmark, had a deaf son, also named Benjamin. The Mayhews later had four more deaf children. By 1824, three other Chilmark households would have deaf children: the Smiths, Luces, and Tiltons. These four sets of parents later reported that they had never known a deaf person prior to the younger Benjamin’s birth (Turner 1847). This is surprising given claims that Martha’s Vineyard already had a well-established deaf community in the 18th century. However, what these parents said is fully consistent with our detailed demographic data on the Vineyard’s deaf and signing population from 1692 to 1998. We conclude that Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language was a language native to Chilmark and West Tisbury that emerged in the years after 1785. That language remained isolated from other signed languages for only 40 years. When the first three Vineyard students enrolled at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, CT in 1825, deaf islanders began integrating themselves into the wider New England Deaf community. In Hartford, Vineyard students encountered the newly-emergent American Sign Language.
Richard P. Meier is a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has long worked on the linguistics of signed languages and on their acquisition as first languages by deaf children.
Justin Power is a postdoctoral fellow in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. His research on signing communities and their signed languages has taken him to far-flung places like Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and now Martha’s Vineyard. Together with Richard Meier, he has conducted extensive archival research on the 19th-century signing community in New England.
Linsey Lee is the oral history curator at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.
Email tthorpe@clamsnet.org for more information.
Free. Sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Library. 508-645-3360