Question

Give a brief description of Hellen Keller's family members and the house in which she lived in initially.

Answer 1

 Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama.Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green,that Helen's grandfather had built decades earlier.She had two siblings, Mildred Campbell and Phillip Brooks Keller, and two older half-brothers from her father's prior marriage, James and William Simpson Keller.

Her father, Arthur H. Keller,spent many years as an editor for the Tuscumbia North Alabamian, and had served as a captain for the Confederate Army.Her paternal grandmother was second cousins with Robert E. Lee.Her mother, Kate Adams,was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Confederate general.Though originally from Massachusetts, Charles Adams also fought for the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, earning the rank of colonel (and acting brigadier-general). Her paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland. One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this coincidence in her first autobiography, stating "that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his."

Helen Keller was born with the ability to see and hear. At 19 months old, she contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain",which might have been scarlet feveror meningitis.The illness left her both deaf and blind. At that time, she was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs;by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family. Even though blind and deaf, Helen Keller had passed through many obstacles and she learned to live with her disabilities. She learned how to tell which person was walking by from the vibrations their footsteps would make. The sex and age of the person could be identified by how strong and continuous the steps were.