A few days before I went to Martha’s Vineyard, my hearing aids broke. As a deaf person who primarily uses American Sign Language (ASL), my hearing aids provide information about whether sound is present, though not always what it means. But lately I’ve come to rely on them most for the visual reminder of deafness that they give to hearing people. Without them, hearing people often assume I’m “ignoring” them, and most blow past patience or curiosity straight to anger. I’ve been shouted at in stores for not responding to a clerk’s call, shoved on a sidewalk for not responding fast enough to someone’s excuse me, assaulted on a subway platform after missing a man’s attempted flirtation.
So it was with both unease and excitement I set off on my trip without the aids.
On the one hand, traveling deaf and alone to a place I’ve never been has some inherent risks. On the other hand, it was early May, and the trip was a welcome respite from a semester’s worth of teaching, book edits, and two small boys at home. Part of me has always liked solo travel, how it allows me to engage with a new place in my natural state of silence. And in this case, it felt particularly apt—I was about to put Martha’s Vineyard’s storied past as a haven for the deaf to the test.
Before I left, I read just about everything available on the island’s deaf history, from the most famous—Nora Groce’s 1985 book Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language—to dissertations and academic publications by deaf and signing historians. I pored over maps, travel websites, train and ferry schedules, plotting out the journey from Philadelphia to the Vineyard. Before I had children, I reveled in the “getting there” part of travel, taking a long train to Montreal, or driving an unplanned route up through Newfoundland. But now I had just three days before the responsibilities of work and childcare would pull me back home. I rented a car, filled a backpack with clothes and a tote bag with notebooks, dropped the boys at school, and headed north.
A history cherished by a few but unknown to many
Katie West was the last “native speaker” of Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language. She died in 1952, and her house is now part of the Chilmark Free Public Library.
Courtesy of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum
The history of sign language on Martha’s Vineyard was traditionally understood to be as follows: In the late 1600s, a deaf man named Jonathan Lambert and his family were part of a group of Massachusetts Bay colonists who left the mainland for Martha’s Vineyard. Historians have theorized that this relative isolation proliferated a hereditary deafness over the next two centuries, a scenario that peaked in the 1850s when an estimated 1 in 155 on the island, and 1 in 25 in the village of Chilmark, were deaf, compared to only 1 in about 5,700 on the mainland.
As a result, a unique language known as Chilmark Sign or Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) developed and was used by deaf and hearing islanders alike. MVSL allowed for the full integration of deaf people into the island’s work, social, and religious spaces without prejudice. Deaf islanders were fishermen, farmers, and business owners; Jared Mayhew, a deaf landowner, founded the island’s first bank. The Martha’s Vineyard deaf community thrived this way until more expedient transport and the establishment of a deaf residential school in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817 drew new settlers to the island and deaf islanders to the mainland, subsuming MVSL and diluting “distinctive” genes. This image of the Vineyard as a signing utopia for deaf people was later ensconced in the hearing anthropologist Nora Groce’s book.
However, the truth is more complicated—as it always is. Groce’s work occurred more than a century after the deaf community was gone and MVSL was swallowed up by the ASL we sign today. Groce’s theories about the genetic and linguistic roots of hereditary deafness and about MVSL being from Kent, England, have been all but ruled out by deaf historians in the United Kingdom. In recording family trees on the Vineyard, Groce hadn’t differentiated between genetic deafness versus acquired deafness; this, along with anonymizing name changes in the book make it difficult to retrace the links between families today. More recent analyses of island genealogy, marriage, and migration patterns suggest that the island’s deaf community started later and was connected to the Hartford deaf world and to ASL earlier than previously thought.
A unique language known as Chilmark Sign or Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) developed and was used by deaf and hearing islanders alike.
What remains is this: For several generations, a proportionally large population of deaf people lived on Martha’s Vineyard, using a signed language with distinctive vocabulary and grammatical features, including a two-handed alphabet. It was likely created organically by deaf islanders, rather than imported.
That everyone on Martha’s Vineyard spoke sign language is unlikely. Perhaps most of Chilmark did, but given the average family size at the time, most folks in Chilmark would have had a deaf person in their household. The phenomenon of village-wide sign vocabulary in areas with multiple large, deaf families has been observed elsewhere, including in Lantz Mill, Virginia, in the same period, and around the world into the present day.
Still, the watery boundaries of the Vineyard would mean that even if they weren’t fluent signers, hearing islanders’ frequent interactions with deaf people would leave little room for ableism. Unlike the way deafness often marks us as “lesser” in today’s society, hearing islanders interviewed by Groce respected their deaf neighbors and thought of their deafness as secondary to their personalities and skills. In a 19th-century fishing economy, knowing at least a few signs would have been advantageous for communicating between boats and the shore, when the only alternative was shouting into the howling wind.
Although Martha’s Vineyard-as-deaf-paradise is at least part fantasy, it’s hard to let go of a good myth. In the USA now, only about 8 percent of parents with deaf children ever learn enough ASL to have a conversation with their child—we’re a bit starved for utopia, and Martha’s Vineyard is about as close to an ancestral homeland as we can get.
With the legend in my heart and the wind of my ancestors-in-spirit at my back, I stood on the deck of a Steamship Authority’s ferry traveling between Falmouth, Massachusetts, and the island’s ferry port Vineyard Haven on a gray afternoon. Within minutes of departure, the Island Home was enveloped in a fog so dense I could no longer see anything in front of me. It was cold, and I wondered what could possibly have possessed the Massachusetts Bay settlers, or the Wampanoag before them, to row into this thick unknown.
In the 1850s, 1 in 25 residents in the village of Chilmark were deaf, compared to only 1 in about 5,700 on the mainland.
Courtesy of Visit Massachusetts
Following the island’s deaf-history tour
We landed in Vineyard Haven about 40 minutes later. I drove to Edgartown, where I’d be staying at the boutique Faraway (see How to take this trip, below), so I could ditch the car. I wandered the town with a pleasant mindlessness, eating fudge and window-shopping fancy island clothing and debating which ice cream shop looked best. I examined the town’s wood-shingled buildings and bright white churches, read each of the many plaques and signs affixed to historical buildings of note, haunted Edgartown Books. I spent a long time loitering dockside, taking in the salt and sparkle of the harbor.
I ate dinner and turned in early. I’d centered my trip around the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce’s driving tour map of key historical deaf community sites, and I planned to make all 10 stops the next day. From my hotel balcony, I watched the sun set and the fog roll back in. Beneath me, the firepits by the pool were ignited in neat rows, as signal fires must have been lit upon these shores many centuries ago. I went to sleep with a feeling of anticipation, as if I hadn’t quite yet arrived.
The driving tour map is relatively new; while Vineyard deaf history has long been held dear by the deaf community, it was often overlooked by the general public until recently.
In the morning, I returned to my car, clutching my map and feeling flush with exploratory spirit. The map is relatively new; while Vineyard deaf history has long been held dear by the deaf community, it was often overlooked by the general public until recently. A resurgence of attention is in part thanks to the efforts of islander Lynn Thorp, who, after reading Groce’s book, couldn’t stop thinking about the benefits signed language might bring to the lives of her hard-of-hearing husband and friends. Wanting to make ASL resources more accessible on-island, she spent more than a decade facilitating the airing of mini-lessons on public access TV and burning DVDs for the island libraries. In 2020, her focus shifted to publicizing the island’s history for visitors, partnering with the Chamber of Commerce to add deaf-centric materials to the Chamber’s website, including the driving map.
Cell service was good, but Google often didn’t differentiate between private and public roads, so U-turns were also plentiful. I started in Vineyard Haven and toured the Martha’s Vineyard Museum ($18 for off-islanders, closed Mondays). In the 2023 season, the museum’s temporary exhibition, They Were Heard, spotlighted the island’s deaf life, but most of it has been packed away and returned to the archives.
“If a tour group wants to see some of the artifacts, I can arrange a special viewing here in the library,” said museum historian Bow Van Riper, who spearheaded research for the exhibit. He suggested that groups contact the museum a few weeks in advance to make a request.
In 1926, American artist Thomas Hart Benton painted this portrait of his deaf neighbor Josie West.
Courtesy of Martha’s Vineyard Museum
Visitors traveling alone or without notice can view two pieces of Vineyard deaf history in the permanent collection: the transcript of an interview with Mildred Huntington, a hearing woman who’d been babysat by a deaf islander (they can also listen to the audio), and a 1926 painting by noted American artist Thomas Hart Benton of his deaf neighbor, a Chilmark farmer named Josie West.
After the museum, I headed on to West Tisbury, to the cove where the Lambert family settled. A winsome mix of forested area and sand beach, Lambert’s Cove was the tour stop that felt closest to a traditional New England beach vacation and one of the few places I ran into fellow travelers—some hiking, some early beachgoers splayed out on towels near the water. Ocean views and dogs playing fetch in the surf were both charming and familiar, making it difficult to imagine what it might have been like when the Lamberts first arrived. I moved on, cut in-island toward tour stops 4 through 10, in Chilmark.
Inland, I found myself overwhelmed by the breadth of farmland—expansive, lush, and often still delineated by centuries-old fieldstone walls. As I marveled, I considered the privilege of preservation. My own understanding of island life was shaped by the extreme poles that made up beaches of my childhood: the Jersey Shore and the rural Croatian coastline. In New Jersey, every inch of the bustling shore is spoken for and cultivated to turn a profit. In Croatia, I stayed with family in a rural fishing village’s postwar quiet, sans shops or telecommunications, the extremely beautiful seascape neither preserved nor cultivated.
At least 28 members of the Chilmark deaf community are buried at Abel’s Hill Cemetery in Chilmark.
Photo by Sara Novic
The Vineyard’s vast farms, stables, and the willingness to leave some wooded spaces totally undeveloped likely speak to inherited wealth that endows the owner beyond a need to capitalize on summer tourism. And yet, I couldn’t help but notice the island’s deaf history is preserved only in fits and starts. At Abel’s Hill Cemetery, where at least 28 members of the Chilmark deaf community are buried, there is no map for locating figures of historical significance. At Lambert’s Cove, Squibnocket beach, and Menemsha harbor, there’s no information detailing the birth of MVSL thought to have come in the wake of Lambert and other deaf fishermen.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the heart of the island’s deaf history resides at the Chilmark library. Ebba Hierta, the library director, was kind enough to sit with me without notice and explain the library’s history and connection to what she called “the deaf ancestors.” The ties were both figurative and literal—one of the library’s rooms had been the home of a prominent deaf couple, Benjamin and Katie West. Benjamin was a lifelong islander, and Katie was originally from Rhode island and married into the island culture. Katie, who died in the early 1950s, is believed to have been the last fluent signer of MVSL. The Wests’ house was purchased by the town and became the Chilmark library. Several additions later, the original room now holds a small shrine of printouts and a DVD recording (notably without subtitles) about MVSL and the Chilmark deaf. The library’s website also features additional resources, including a teaching guide and recorded presentation about deaf history, with ASL interpretation.
A mural in the Chilmark Library shows two children reading a book about sign language.
Photo by Ebba Hierta
“We see a lot of visitors [at the library] in the summer, many of whom are deaf, but not all,” Hierta said. Among islanders, library and museum programming has increased awareness about the historic deaf community, too. “I wish we could do more,” she said, “but it’s hard without a big research staff and budget.” The library requests that visitors wishing to speak with the librarian schedule an appointment at least a week in advance, particularly in peak season. On my way out, Hierta brought me to the children’s section, where high on the wall, a mural depicted children in an attic play space with a sign language book, one signing the letter “L”—a static portion of the sign for “library”—frozen in time.
Nearing the end of the tour out on Squibnocket Beach, I grew wistful. Likely used as a launch for deaf fishermen, I thought of how the shore, now empty, might have looked dotted with boats and nets and the flurry of sign language. The views were breathtaking, the bluffs making it easy to contemplate the end of things. Today deaf culture is under increasing threat, as doctors seek to eradicate deafness with gene therapy and stem cell therapies. As I looked at a crystalline horizon, I wondered if the deaf community here had felt that same existential threat as the years passed and their numbers dwindled, or if their hearing neighbors’ knowledge of sign language helped allay their fears.
Squibnocket Beach is a stop on the island’s deaf history driving tour. It was used as a launch by fishermen in the 18th and 19th centuries; many were likely deaf.
Photo by flyben24/Shutterstock
The future of deaf-history tourism on Martha’s Vineyard
While glimpses of Vineyard deaf history are plentiful if you know where to look, real access to cultural information requires a fair amount of advanced preparation (and an internet connection).
I hope efforts to commemorate this rich history will continue, particularly in incidental ways like plaques or materials a tourist or passerby might encounter on their own, just as deaf and hearing Vineyarders were once in casual contact with one another in their daily lives.
More of that may be on the horizon. On Hierta’s recommendation, I spoke to the leader of Clemson University’s Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language Project, which aims to serve residents, merchants, and tourists alike. Jody Cripps, assistant professor of American Sign Language in the Department of Languages, said the team had a broad scope of preservation, research, and development and is working with islanders to decide how best to commemorate, memorialize, and share information. “We did think about plaques,” said Cripps, “but we want to ensure that we’re not simply catering to busloads of tourists. We also want to be respectful of people for whom Chilmark is home.”
Cripps noted that the team was at work on a cemetery map with the locations of historic deaf community members’ graves, which he ultimately hoped could be a document people could pick up at the library. But the process of locating graves is difficult, and he wasn’t sure when it would be ready.
While deafness is no longer central to Vineyard culture, its spiritual inheritance is still prominent.
In the meantime, while deafness is no longer central to Vineyard culture, its spiritual inheritance is still prominent. Often when I travel, I meet strangers who panic in the face of deafness, but for a few days on Martha’s Vineyard, no one batted an eye. A variety of folks across the island—from the concierge, to a librarian, to Steamship Authority terminal workers—were amenable switching to writing when necessary. Servers at Espresso Love and Atlantic collected my order via pointing at the menu without any angst. A cashier at Rosewater Market gestured so fluidly I was the one taken aback by our exchange. The Faraway hotel’s general manager knew the manual alphabet, spelling out some simple words when we crossed paths; a parking attendant signed “thank you” as I paid my way out.
Maybe these moments of ease were thanks to islanders’ increased exposure to their history through community programming spearheaded by libraries and folks like Thorp. Maybe a tourist economy has conditioned people to be polite, both to deaf groups who’ve made pilgrimages to Chilmark and across various language barriers. Maybe it was all coincidence. Or maybe it was something in me, that I approached each interaction a little more confidently, buoyed by the knowledge that standing on the land of our deaf ancestors, part of me belonged there.
On Martha’s Vineyard, nobody spoke sign, exactly, but no one found me strange, either. And whether or not the bulk of hearing islanders really knew MVSL centuries ago, I think it was the ability for the deaf to live without stigma that made the place most special; in this way, its legacy remains.
How to do this trip
The Faraway hotel’s general manager knew the manual alphabet.
Photo by Matt Kisiday
Where to stay: My home base was Faraway, a boutique hotel in Edgartown that fastidiously strikes the balance between historic charm and luxury amenities, an aesthetic that I’d come to understand as a trademark of Vineyard tourism. My room, an outbuilding studio suite, offered a showstopping view of the bay and Chappaquiddick Island. Faraway has a restaurant and an expansive pool and patio with food service, but its location at the edge of Edgartown’s main drag of shops and restaurants is arguably its greatest asset. In the opposite direction, it’s about 15 minutes on foot to a sandy public beach and the Edgartown lighthouse.
The tour: The deaf history driving tour is self-guided and can be accessed online via the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce website or downloaded as a PDF brochure. The Chilmark Library has a resource page of more background and videos.
Getting around: If I were visiting Martha’s Vineyard solely for a beach getaway, Faraway, Edgartown, and traveling by bicycle and public shuttle could easily be enough to sustain the trip. Having a car on island—either via rental or ferry—requires significant advanced planning for reservations during peak season. (In contrast, walk-on ferry passengers can buy a same-day ticket.) But accessing the full range of the island’s deaf heritage would be difficult without a car.
