Anne Sullivan

Anne Sullivan with Helen Keller, 1903

"I have lost my patience and courage many, many times; but I have found that one difficult task accomplished makes the next easier." - Anne Sullivan

Anne Sullivan was born in Massachusetts in 1866 to parents Thomas and Alice, immigrants who had left Ireland during the Great Famine, seeking a better life in the United States. The Sullivans, however, found life in their new country challenging. Thomas became a farm laborer who struggled with alcoholism, and the family lived in poverty.

The financial hardship was just the beginning of an upbringing steeped in challenges for Anne. Atop the poverty and instability, she became partially blind after contracting trachoma at five years old. Then, her mother passed away when Anne was eight, and two years later, her father abandoned his children. At that point, she was separated from her sister and sent with her brother to the Tewksbury almshouse, a home for poor people.

Anne abhorred life at the almshouse. The conditions were appalling. Overcrowded, unsanitary, inadequate food, and rampant disease. Anne's brother, frail since birth, died three months after their arrival. She would write later, "Very much of what I remember about Tewksbury is indecent, cruel, melancholy."

What she deeply desired was to go to school. But besides a brief period of living in a hospital, Anne spent about five years at Tewksbury before finally finding a way out. During an almshouse inspection in 1880, she ran up to a group of people that included the State Inspector of Charities. Not knowing which one was the Inspector, she started saying while crying, "Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Sanborn, I want to go to school!" This was enough to persuade him to move her to the Perkins School for the Blind.

As Anne reflected on leaving Tewksbury, she wrote, "I often wonder how I escaped contamination in that slum...I was not corrupted by it." Still, adjusting to her new life at the Perkins School proved challenging. "Because I was ignorant, and felt inferior, I pretended that I was scornful and contemptuous of everybody. As a matter of fact, I was extremely unhappy. My mind was a question mark, my heart a frustration," Anne would write.