Johanna Mansfield Sullivan or better known as Anne Sullivan is a teacher and instructor famous for teaching Helen how to sign and communicate. Sullivan was born April 14, 1866 in Agawam Massachusetts. Her parents were poor immigrants that did not know how to read or write. When she was five, she contracted a disease called trachoma. This disease caused painful infections in her eyes and made her blind. Three years later, her mother died and her father left the children because he thought he could not raise them on his own. Sullivan and her younger brother James Sullivan were both sent to an almshouse, ir a poor orphanage. James suffered from a hip injury and died two months after they were put in the almshouse. Another blind person at the
