Nancy Rowe and George Curtis: Deaf Lives in Maine 150 Years Ago
Previous accounts of early Deaf settlement in New England have focused on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (Groce 1985), and on southern New Hampshire (Lane, Pillard, and French 2000). This article is based on some findings in a larger project concerned with Deaf settlement in Maine. Maine is the site of one of the oldest and largest extended Deaf families in the United States: the Lovejoy-Jellison-Berry family (Jones 1996). However, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, many extended Deaf families lived in Maine. Examining the 1850 census, the first government census to identify all of the household members who were "Deaf and Dumb," will give us some idea of the number. We retain only those names that are identified as "Deaf and Dumb" and that occur twice, as an approximate way to identify those hereditarily Deaf. Twenty-nine family names occurred at least twice in twenty-seven towns. In those families were 113 Deaf people, for an average of 3.9 Deaf persons per family. Some of these families (those from Martha's Vineyard and others that had come directly from England) had ancestors in Kent, where, Groce (1985) has suggested, a recessive gene associated with being Deaf was widespread. No doubt other [End Page 152] Deaf settlers came as the word spread of Deaf settlement in Maine, and some no doubt landed there for reasons unrelated to their being Deaf.
Click for larger view | Figure 1 |
This article recounts intermarriage and family life in a nineteenth- century extended Deaf family in Maine: the Rowes and the Curtises. It draws on letters between Nancy Rowe, George Curtis, and members of their families, letters that have fortunately been preserved (Women in History Project, n.d.)
In New Gloucester, Maine, Nancy Rowe (1815–1895) hailed from a large Deaf family whose ancestors came from Devonshire in England. On immigrating to America, they settled first in Gloucester, Massachusetts. When a tract of land in the Maine wilderness (then a part of Massachusetts) was granted to the inhabitants of Gloucester in 1735, several families moved there. The town of New Gloucester also received settlers from Martha's Vineyard (Poole 1976).
Figure 1 presents the Rowe family with an indication of their ties to the Curtis and Reed families, for whom only Deaf members are shown. Nancy Rowe had five Deaf brothers and two Deaf sisters. She also had five hearing siblings, of whom Nathaniel and two others died in infancy. (Birth and death dates for all Rowe and Curtis names cited in the text appear in table 1.)
Nancy's parents were hearing and distantly related. Her paternal grandparents were both Rowes, and one of her mother's ancestors [End Page 153] married one of her father's forebears. Thus we infer that Nancy and her seven Deaf siblings were Deaf because of a recessive pattern of transmission. That both of Nancy's parents were hearing is consistent with that hypothesis but the fact that more than half of their children were Deaf is not. On average, only one-fourth of the children should express a recessive trait. The odds that chance alone explains that there were as many as eight Deaf children in this family of thirteen are less than 1 in 100 (chi square = 9.3 p < 0.01)."1
Click for larger view | Table 1 Curtis and Rowe names cited in text or figures |
At age thirteen, Nancy entered the American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb in 1829 and graduated four years later; five of her seven Deaf siblings would also be educated there. In 1833 the principal, Lewis Weld, gave her a certificate testifying that she had been "a pupil of the American Asylum, [and] made good attainments in the knowledge of written language and other branches of a common education...
