Martha’s Vineyard, What?

Martha’s Vineyard
Our world primarily uses spoken language for communication, but what if that wasn’t true?
In the mid 17th century, an island off the coast of Massachusetts was settled and inhabited. This island is Martha’s Vineyard. One of the first settlers was Jonathan Lambert: a Deaf man with two Deaf children. This genetic Deafness quickly spread and by the 19th century, 1 in every 155 residents was born Deaf.
Over time, the need for visual language pushed the community to create a signed language: Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language. Regardless of your status as hearing or Deaf, sign language was a widely-used and accepted mode of communication. As Deaf education became more popular on the mainland, Martha’s Vineyard dwindled. Students would leave for the mainland for education, settle, and raise their families off the island.
The last known resident of this Deaf Utopia Martha’s Vineyard passed away in 1950. The development of signed language on the island, which then melded with other modes of visual communication on the mainland, highly influenced what we know today as American Sign Language!