Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language was widely used on the island of Martha’s Vineyard from the early 18th century to the late 20th century. It was remarkable for its use by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. MVSL is also notable for the role it played in the development of American Sign Language.The language was able to thrive on Martha’s Vineyard: In 1854, when the island’s deaf population peaked, the US national average was one deaf person in 5728, while on Martha’s Vineyard it was one in 155. In the town of Chilmark, where most of the deaf people lived, it was 1 in 25; in a section of Chilmark called Squibnocket, as much as a quarter of the population of 60 was deaf. From the late 18th to the early twentieth century, virtually everyone on Martha’s Vineyard possessed some degree of fluency in the local sign language.
ORIGINS: The ancestry of most of the deaf population of Martha’s Vineyard can be traced back to a forested area in the south of England known as the Weald : specifically the part of the Weald in the county of Kent. Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language is thought to descend from a sign language that was used there in the 16th century, now known as Old Kent Sign Language. A number of families from a puritan community in the Kentish Weald emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony area of the United States in the early 17th century, many of their descendents later settling on Martha’s Vineyard. The first deaf person known to have settled there was a carpenter and farmer Jonathan Lambert, who moved there with his hearing wife in 1694. By 1710, the migration had virtually ceased, and the endogamous community that was created contained a high incidence of hereditary deafness that would persist for over 200 years.
Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language died along with Katie West (1952), the last deaf person born into the island’s sign language tradition.