Anne Sullivan

Anne Sullivan Macy (born as Johanna Mansfield Sullivan; April 14, 1866 – October 20, 1936) was an American teacher best known for being the instructor and lifelong companion of Helen Keller. At the age of five, Sullivan contracted trachoma, an eye disease, which left her partially blind and without reading or writing skills. She received her education as a student of the Perkins School for the Blind. Soon after graduation at age 20, she became a teacher to Keller. Childhood On April 14, 1866, Sullivan was born in Feeding Hills, Agawam, Massachusetts, United States. The name on her baptismal certificate was Johanna Mansfield Sullivan but she was called "Anne" or "Annie" from birth. She was the eldest child of Thomas and Alice (Cloesy) Sullivan, who had emigrated from Ireland to the United States during the Great Famine. When she was five years old, Sullivan contracted the bacterial eye disease trachoma, which caused many painful infections and over time made her nearly blind. When she was eight, her mother died from tuberculosis, and her father abandoned the children two years later for fear that he could not raise them on his own. She and her younger brother, James (Jimmie), were sent to the run-down and overcrowded almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, today part of Tewksbury Hospital, and their younger sister, Mary, was left to an aunt. Jimmie had a weak hip condition and then died from tuberculosis four months into their stay. Anne remained at Tewksbury after his death and endured two unsuccessful eye operations.