The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry, Harlan Lane, Richard C. Pillard, Ulf Hedburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 269 pp., hardcover, $49.95, ISBN 978-0-19-975929-3) THIS VOLUME HAS a double aim. The authors argue for the importance of understanding Deaf people, in this case American Sign Language users, as a distinct ethnic group (Part I). This then frames an in depth history of the Deaf families of New England (Parts II-IV). Starting with the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, and continuing until about 1640, more than 20,000 colonists, most of them English Puritans, made their way to New England's harsh shores. This small founding population and the practice of intermarriage within extended families including between first cousins led to significant Deaf lineages in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine. The first known Deaf person of Henniker, New Hampshire, was Nahum Brown, a farmer born in the late 1700s. His Deaf son,Thomas Brown, entered the American Asylum, the school founded by Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc, at eighteen and was one of the first pupils to graduate. There Thomas Brown met Mary Smith from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. They married and returned to Henniker where they were at the center of an active Deaf community. In 1887, the American Asylum listed forty-four students past and present from the Henniker area. This Deaf enclave became a powerful force in the Deaf institutions of the era. Thomas helped found the New England Gallaudet Association of Deaf-Mutes (NEGA), copublished a newspaper, was director of the Deaf-Mute Library Association, and helped found the New England Industrial School for Deaf Mutes. His Deaf son and nephews followed in his footsteps. The Deaf community of Martha's Vineyard was quite different from that of Henniker. The Vineyard had high rates of intermarriage between just a few families with multiple ties to Deaf ancestors from England's Kentish Weald. This led to high rates of deafness and to a population where both Deaf and hearing people knew sign language. DeafVineyarders lived lives similar to those of their hearing neighbors, sharing professions such as farmer and fisherman, interacting with many of them easily in sign language, and marrying hearing people at a far higher rate than their Deaf counterparts in Henniker. In the late eighteenth century, setders from Martha's Vineyard, including Deaf families, moved to Maine, drawn by inexpensive land and a wealth of natural resources. Parts III and IV describe the important Deaf families of the northern cluster, including the Smith- Parkhurst and Samuel Allen clans, and the Davises, Lovejoys, Jellisons, Jacks, and Berrys, and the southern cluster including the Rogers-Holmes, Badger-Boardwin-Brown-Glidden, and Curtis-Rowe clans. The most interesting parts of these chapters are the glimpses into the everyday lives of Deaf individuals that reveal the close ties between Deaf families and fellow Deaf- Wo rid members. In 1849, Samuel Rowe wrote to his brother-in-law Ebenezer Curtis, saw some former deaf-mutes, viz Homer Smithu, and some old ones I did not remember well. . . .You will laugh at me for I am everyday happy to be in the company with sister PersisD, Lucy M. Reedu [wife of Benjamin RoweD] who works with PersisD, and Lucvd's brother AdinD is in town and works as a printer (p. 155, information in [ ] brackets and d for Deaf from Lane et al.) In 1850, Rebekah Allen met numerous Deaf cousins from Massachusetts and Connecticut at the American Asylum alumni reunion. Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, Francis Berry had an adulterous affair with Mrs. Isaac Jellison, nee Lydia Lovejoy; their unsanctioned relationship thus bringing together three of large Deaf clans. These small tastes of lives left me wishing for much more. Deaf families are a key part of the authors evidence for Deaf ethnicity which surpasses family in its scope: it evokes a rich history of one's kind and a historic fate across generations (i). …
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May 29, 2015
Michael M Mckee + 4
Open Access
