Anne Sullivan - Early Life

Early Life

Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. According to her baptismal certificate, her full name at birth was Johanna Mansfield Sullivan; however, she was called Anne from the time she was born. Her parents' names were Thomas Sullivan and Alice Cloesy Sullivan and they were Irish immigrants who couldn't read and had virtually no money. In 1874 her mother, Alice, died, probably of tuberculosis; after which Anne and her younger brother, Jimmie were sent to an almshouse in Tewksbury, Massachusetts (today part of Tewksbury Hospital). She was at Tewksbury for four years. In 1880, Anne, who was blind from untreated trachoma and had untreated intestinal worms, was sent to the Perkins School for the Blind. Anne had a brother, Jimmie (James), born in 1869, a sister Ellen born in 1867 and a sister, Mary.

Read more about this topic:  Anne Sullivan

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:

    Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)

    For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.
    Joyce Cary (1888–1957)