An island where deaf and hearing neighbours signed together for centuries

From the 1700s to the mid-1900s, Martha's Vineyard had such a high rate of hereditary deafness, roughly 1 in 25 in the town of Chilmark, that most hearing islanders grew up fluently bilingual in speech and a local sign language. Deaf and hearing neighbours signed together at church and in shops, until the last deaf signer died in 1952 and the island's own sign language faded with them.

— Nora Ellen Groce, Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard — Harvard University Press, 1985
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