Abstract

A recessive trait of a congenital disease can spread in an isolated population. In this article we focus on the history of the spread of recessive deafness. A large deaf population existed in an area in Kent in the 16th century. The high number of deaf people was caused by a genetic mutation at the time, which resulted in a recessive gene for deafness, which was passed on for generations. Because of religious disagreements, Father John Lothrop had to leave England and moved with his Puritan congregation to the new world with a number of deaf families. They landed in Massachusetts and moved to the island of Martha's Vineyards. For nearly two centuries the population on the island was extremely isolated, which led to a sharp increase in congenital deafness. In the 19th century, the deaf population on Martha's Vineyard was very high compared to mainland America. The deaf were well integrated in society due to the use of sign language. The deafness on Martha's Vineyard began to end due to the expansion of the number of gene pools and the increase in the number of immigrants. At the beginning of the 20th century there were few islanders left with congenital deafness.

Keywords: History; Hereditary; Martha's Vineyards

References

1. Alexander Graham Bell. Vineyard Gazette (1992).
2. Baer C and Flanders Eddy K. "The Lambert Family".
3. Banks CE. The history of Martha's Vineyard Dunkes County Massachusetts, Published by George H. Dean - Boston (1911).
4. Bell AG. “How to improve the race”. Journal of Heredity 1 (1914): 1-7.
5. Bell AG. Marriage. An address to the deaf. Washinton DC. Saunders printings (1898).
6. Bell AG. Memoir upon the formation of a deaf variety of the human race. The National Academy of Sciences. November (1883).
7. Cameron W. “Deaf History: Martha’s Vineyard”. In The Lifeprint Library at ASL University (2005).
8. Dresser Th. “Martha’s Vineyard - A History”. History press Charlestone (2015)
9. Groce NE. Everyone here spoke sign language: Hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1985).
10. Huntington G. “Chilmark’s deaf: Valued Citizens”. The Dukes County Intelligencer 22.2 (1981).
11. Kageleir J. "The Island That Spoke By Hand”. Yankee Magazine (1999).
12. Kusters A. “Deaf Utopias? Reviewing the Sociocultural Literature on the World’s ‘‘Martha’s Vineyard Situations”. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education1 (2010): 4-16.
13. Lang HG. Genesis of a Community: The American Deaf Experience in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries In John Vickrey Van Cleve (Ed.), The deaf history reader, 1-23. Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press (2007).
14. Marschalk M and Spencer PE. “Deaf Studies, Language, and Education”. Oxford University Press Inc (2003): 157-158.
15. Nomeland MM and Nomeland RE. “The deaf community in America- History in the making”. McFarland and Company Inc. Publishers. (2012): 27-30.

Citation

Citation: Rinze A Tange. “The Deafness History of Martha's Vineyard".Acta Scientific Otolaryngology 3.2 (2020): 78-82.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Rinze A Tange. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.