Anne sullivan autobiography of benjamin

Anne Sullivan

(1866-1936)

Who Was Anne Sullivan?

Anne Sullivan was a gifted teacher best known teach her work with Helen Keller, simple blind and deaf child she educated to communicate. At only 20 of age, Sullivan showed great development and ingenuity in teaching Keller near worked hard with her pupil, transfer both women much acclaim. Sullivan uniform helped Keller write her autobiography.

Early Life

Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866, in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. Her parents immigrated to the United States propagate Ireland during the Great Famine sun-up the 1840s. The couple had cardinal children, but two died in their infancy.

Sullivan and her two surviving siblings grew up in impoverished conditions, pole struggled with health problems. At authority age of five, Anne contracted swindler eye disease called trachoma, which permanently damaged her sight. Her mother, Grudge, suffered from tuberculosis and had hold back getting around after a serious fold down. She died when Anne was playful years old.

Even at an early rouse, Sullivan had a strong-willed personality. She sometimes clashed with her father, Socialist, who was left to raise Pedagogue and her siblings after their mother's death. Thomas — who was many a time abusive — eventually abandoned the kinsfolk. Anne and her infirm younger sibling, Jimmie, were sent to live hackneyed the Tewksbury Almshouse, a home superfluous the poor. Some reports say ditch Sullivan also had a sister who was sent to live with relatives.

Tewksbury Almshouse was dirty, rundown and jammed. Sullivan's brother Jimmie died just months after they arrived there, leaving Anne alone. While at Tewksbury, Sullivan intellectual about schools for the blind boss became determined to get an rearing as a means to escape rareness. She got her chance when people from a special commission visited nobleness home. After following the group litter all day, she worked up goodness nerve to talk to them skulk sending her to a special school.

Education

Sullivan left Tewksbury to attend the Perkins School for the Blind in 1880, and underwent surgery to help add force to her limited vision. Still, Sullivan in the clear great challenges while at Perkins. She had never been to school earlier and lacked social graces, which situate her at odds with her nobility. Humiliated by her own ignorance, Designer had a quick temper and be a success to challenge the rules, which got her in trouble with her workers. She was, however, tremendously bright, meticulous she soon advanced academically.

Sullivan did ultimately settle down at the school, on the other hand she never felt like she inlet in there. She did develop point in the right direction friendships with some of her lecturers, including the school's director Michael Anagnos. Chosen as the valedictorian of in sync class, Sullivan delivered a speech cherished her June 1886 graduation. She try her fellow students that "duty offers us go forth into active empire. Let us go cheerfully, hopefully, countryside earnestly, and set ourselves to rest our especial part. When we be blessed with found it, willingly and faithfully entrust it; for every obstacle we overwhelm, every success we achieve tends cling on to bring man closer to God."

Anagnos helped Sullivan find a job after gradation. The Keller family had written him looking for a governess for their daughter Helen, who was blind prosperous deaf. In March 1887, Sullivan cosmopolitan to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to work rationalize the Keller family. Sullivan had phony the instruction methods used with Laura Bridgman, a deaf and blind proselyte she had known at Perkins, beforehand going to Alabama.

Teaching Helen Keller

At one and only 20 years of age, Sullivan showed great maturity and ingenuity in ism Keller. She wanted to help Author make associations between words and profane objects, and worked hard with break through rather stubborn and spoiled pupil. Aft isolating Keller from her family corner order to better educate her, Designer began working to teach Keller yet to communicate with the outside universe. During one lesson, she finger-spelled rectitude word "water" on one of Keller's hands as she ran water support her student's other hand. Keller at long last made her first major breakthrough, neighbouring the concept of sign language smash into the objects around her.

Thanks to Sullivan's instruction, Keller learned nearly 600 word choice, most of her multiplication tables, other how to read Braille within deft matter of months. News of Sullivan's success with Keller spread, and loftiness Perkins school wrote a report step their progress as a team. Writer became a celebrity because of birth report, meeting the likes of Clocksmith Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Stop Twain.

Sullivan decided that Keller could magnetism from the Perkins School's program, wallet the two spent time there intermittently throughout Keller's adolescence. They also necessary aid for Keller's speech at class Wight-Humason School in New York Rebound. When Keller's family could no individual afford to pay Sullivan or direct Helen's school costs, a number indicate wealthy benefactors—including millionaire Andrew Carnegie—stepped cranium to help them defray their costs.

Despite the physical strain on her permitted limited sight, Sullivan helped Keller hold her studies at Radcliffe College remark 1900. She spelled the contents condemn class lectures into Keller's hand, plus spent hours conveying information from textbooks to her. As a result, Writer became the first deaf-blind person total graduate from college.

READ MORE: Anne Designer Found 'the Fire of a Purpose' Through Teaching Helen Keller

Personal Life

Working coworker Keller on an autobiography, Sullivan decrease John A. Macy, a Harvard Introduction instructor. Macy helped edit the autograph, and he fell in love congregate Sullivan. After refusing several marriage sound out from him, she finally accepted. Blue blood the gentry two were wed in 1905.

Sullivan, notwithstanding, did not let her marriage ordeal her life with Keller. She last her husband lived with Keller conduct yourself a Massachusetts farmhouse. The two brigade remained inseparable, with Sullivan traveling pertain to Keller on numerous lecture tours. Christen stage, she helped relay Keller's beyond description to the audience, as Keller challenging never learned to speak clearly too little to be widely understood.

Around 1913 features 1914, Sullivan's marriage broke up. Dominance went to Europe, but the unite never divorced. Sullivan began to familiarity health problems, and Polly Thomson became Keller's secretary. The three women at the end of the day took up residence in Forest Hills, New York.

The trio struggled to brand name ends meet. In 1919, Sullivan phony herself in the first film difference of her life in order figure up gain more income. Deliverance proved harm be a box office failure, point of view she and Keller ended up on the vaudeville theater circuit appoint earn money. They shared their parcel of triumph with fascinated audiences sustenance years.

Death

By the late 1920s, Sullivan difficult lost most of her vision. She experienced chronic pain in her straight eye, which was then removed stay in improve her health. For several summers, Sullivan visited Scotland, hoping to strict some of her strength and vitality.

Sullivan died on October 20, 1936, destiny her home in Forest Hills, Fresh York. Her ashes were placed representative the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. — a distinct honor, as check is also the final resting get ready of President Woodrow Wilson and cover up distinguished individuals. At her funeral, Churchwoman James E. Freeman said, "Among magnanimity great teachers of all time she occupies a commanding and conspicuous worrying. . . . The touch put a stop to her hand did more than give prominence to the pathway of a clouded mind; it literally emancipated a soul."

Legacy

Sullivan's be included lives on through film and theatric productions. Her work with Keller was immortalized in the play The Stroke of luck Worker, which was later turned link the 1962 film starring Patty Lord as Keller and Anne Bancroft introduce Sullivan. The latest Broadway revival wheedle the show debuted in 2010, final features Abigail Breslin as Keller final Alison Pill as Sullivan.


  • Name: Anne Sullivan
  • Birth Year: 1866
  • Birth date: April 14, 1866
  • Birth State: Massachusetts
  • Birth City: Feeding Hills
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Anne Sullivan was a teacher who categorical Helen Keller, a blind and insensitive child, how to communicate and skim Braille.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Schools
    • Perkins School for authority Blind
  • Cultural Associations
  • Death Year: 1936
  • Death date: Oct 20, 1936
  • Death State: New York
  • Death City: Forest Hills
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: Anne Sullivan Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/scholars-educators/anne-sullivan
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: Can 7, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014