Chilmark, Massachusetts
A Short History of Chilmark
From Wampanoag ground and a town that took its name from an English village in 1694, to a farming and fishing community that once shared its own language, Chilmark has spent more than three centuries deciding its own business in one room.
Wampanoag Ground, and an English Name
Long before any English settler arrived, the western end of Martha’s Vineyard was home to the Wampanoag, who have lived on the island for thousands of years. Chilmark was incorporated on September 14, 1694, the first community to separate from the two original Vineyard towns of Tisbury and Edgartown. It took its name from Chilmark in Wiltshire, England, the ancestral home of the family of Thomas Mayhew, who led the first English settlement of the island. When you drive the up-island roads you are crossing ground that was named and worked long before there was a town line to cross.
A Town That Shared a Language
Chilmark holds a striking chapter in American language history. By 1854 roughly one Chilmark resident in every 25 was deaf, against a national average of about one in 5,728, and the town’s hearing and deaf residents alike used Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language in daily life. That island sign language helped shape American Sign Language, which is used across the country today. It is a piece of history that belongs to this town in particular, and it is worth knowing that a place this small once built something the whole country still uses.
Menemsha, Farms, and Peaked Hill
Chilmark grew up as a town of pastures, stone walls, and the working fishing harbor of Menemsha on Vineyard Sound, one of the last active commercial fishing villages in Massachusetts. Peaked Hill, at 311 feet, is the highest point on Martha’s Vineyard and stands within the town. That inheritance of farm and shore still shapes what the town takes up at Town Meeting, from watershed protection to housing, because so much of it comes back to a single question: how a small island town keeps land and water working and keeps people able to live here.
Conserving the Land
In 1986 the island’s voters created the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, funded by a 2 percent fee on real estate transfers, and it has since protected thousands of acres across the Vineyard, several parcels of them in Chilmark, as land that can never be developed. Decisions like that one still belong to the open Town Meeting, where every registered voter in the room has a vote, which is the same way Chilmark has settled its business since 1694.
Sources: Chilmark, Massachusetts (town history and incorporation), en.wikipedia.org; Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, mvlandbank.com.