The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-02-10
A SILENT SETTLEMENT.
TOWN WHERE PEOPLE TALK IN
PANTOMINIE.

During 200 Years-A LOnE-Lived
People to Whom the Sign Ian
EuHge Is Indispensable.
From the New York World.
Martha Vineyards deaf and dumb in
habitants arord one Of the strongest
instances Of the power Of heredity ever
recorded. Here is the isolated little COM
munity of Chilmark. primitive New Eng
lank folk Of the purest strain. number
ing 1ls persons. OF whom thirty-six. men,
women. and children. are deaf and dumb.
and were born so. That is to say. of the
entire population % per cent. are speech
less-one in every four
In FIVE families in Chilmark, OF the
twenty-eight children fifteen are deaf and
dumb.
Stop and consider what this peculiar
marvel Of science and sociology means
/ in a place where all the citizens, every
| family, and all the children. come in
contact with each other every day for
/ years.
| Every fourth person, for instance, who
! goes to the village grocery, can't tell in
/ words what he wants to buy Every
/ fourth Chilmark citizen who applies for
] his mail at the Squibnocket postofice
/ is unable TO utter his name When the
| Chilmark ladies gather for the weekly
s'v ing cncle. as likely as not the same
| fatal proportion of one in four prevents
several gossip-loving females from rel
ishing the latest and choicest bits Of
! social and domestic small talk without
the aid of an Interpreter. Or it may be
that the Chilmark boy or girl who wants
a new-fangled toy for Christmas has to
make the fact known by means OF the
sign language.
Think Of an up-to-date American boy
unable to enjoy the inalienable right Of
saying what Santa Claus shall put in
his stocking.
All of which means that in the Chill
mark social economy the deaf and dumb
alphabet is an indispensable an accom-
plishment as a knowledge of its language
is to a man who would live in foreign
land. The grocer must know
1t in order not to drive away
| trade the postmaster must be
expert in it, or p per cent. OF the pop
ulation will petition for his removal on
the ground of incompetency; pater fam
lilies must study it., and all the boys and
girls who so to the village school and
the school mistress herself must under
stand the significance OF the mystic
signs and combinations which make up
the finger language Of those whom her
edity has deprived Of speech.
Chllmark is thus divided into three
parts intelligence and one part unintelll-
gence Social lines are drawn at the
hearing Smiths" and those deaf Jones'
es," and the hearing son" of the deaf
Mr.. Robinson must not be COMPOUNDED
with his unfortunate deaf brother.
SO it happens that every day in the
year this queer little community down by
the laundering shores Of the Atlantic
ocean is the scene of a series of singular
pantomimes, carried on in the streets, in
the stores, in the family circle, and from
Chilmark back doors.
Suppose you live In a lonely Chilmark
farmhouse and your nearest neighbor is
an eigth of a mile away The men in
| both houses are fisherfolk and so you
have spy glasses. You go to your door
at II, say in the morning. Your neigh
Dor is at hers. You signal to her in the
! sign language with your glass some ques-
ton about the catch or the take from the
| lobster pots or a bit of village gossip, and
! then you put your glass to your eye and
| she waves to you with her glass her re-
ply
Or you make a neighborly call-they
/ don't have such things in Chilmark as
afternoon teas. The spoken language and
! sign language will be so mingled in the
| conversation that you pass unconsciously
! from one to the other or use both at once
/ Half the family speak, very probably
| while half do not but the mutes are not
/ a bit uncomfortable in their deprivation
/ OF the noble art of language, and the
! community has adjusted itself to the
Is-f- sfr Ton, hne
| become a sort of second nature with them
/ Indeed, it's sometimes convenient to be
| deaf. Not long ago a fisherman took a
! lot of Holsters under the size allowed by
| law A few hours after he had caller.
| 1t was the inspector-who could tell? No
| device could get a sign of intelligence
| from him. Silent and uncomprehending,
| he stood like a statue until finally con-
WINGED that no minion of the law was on
! his track, when his fingers flew like
magic in the eagerness of his eXplana-
| ton, and the basket of small reddish
| green crawlers was produced for admi-
ration.
The grim pathos of this condition as
| it appears at first glance to the outsider is
! in great measure diminished when it is
! learned that these kindly and generally
well-informed people are proud of their
| affliction and have come to regard 1t as a
I kind of plume in the hat of the race.
]
! of one of natures memorable laws, and
are therefore unique, and where there
are so many of them the horror and the
! shame of the affiietion become less keenly
/ felt.
Elsewhere the afflicted are screened as
much as possible from public gaze, and
| invariably from public notoriety. But
! these people gave me great lot of photo
/ graphs of ancestors extending back four
! generations. These are all pictures of
people who never spoke word from the
/ day of their birth.
! Now for the cause. Why is one person
! in every four in Chilmark deaf and dumb?
| 1t was in order to answer this question
| for the readers of the Sunday World that l
! visited the place one bleak day recently.
! To reach Chilmark it is necessary to
/ take the boat from New Bedford to Vine
yard Haven and then drive twenty miles
/ over the downs and among the scrub oaks
| of the Atlantic side of Martha's Vineyard
] I started from Vineyard Haven about
I the middle of a chill afternoon with one
I of the Oldest residents of the island as
my driver. a strapping, big blue-eyed
/ fellow, uncommoniy well developed physi-
( cally uncommonly bright mentally, but
| not able to tell me much about Chilmark
I which lives so much to itself and by