A marriage between two deaf people occurred in Weymouth, Massachusetts, even earlier. Matthew Pratt, who was born in Plymouth Colony in 1629 and had been deaf since about the age of twelve, was taught to read and write, and he spoke “scarce intelligibly” and very seldom. In 1661, he married Sarah Hunt, a woman who had been deaf since the age of three, who also did not use speech. They had seven children and owned twenty acres of farmland in east Weymouth as well as eighteen acres on the west side of “Mill River.”¹⁷ Cotton Mather mentioned that Sarah “spoke with signs” and that her children learned to speak “sooner with eyes and hands than by their lips.” Evidence that an attempt was made to educate Sarah is found in the report that she was not raised a Christian but was later converted with the help of Matthew and several relatives, “who were able to communicate with her easily.”¹⁸