Miss Keller’s home is at Tuscumbia, Alabama, where she was born on
June 27, 1880. Some of the best blood of both the north and the south
flows in her veins, and it is probable that her uncommon mental powers
are in no small degree due to heredity. Her father, Arthur H. Keller,
a polished southern gentleman, with a large, chivalrous nature, fine
intelligence and attractive manners, was the descendant of a family
of Swiss origin, which had settled in Virginia and mixed with some
of the oldest families in that state. He served as a captain in the
Confederate army during the Civil War, and, at the time of Helen’s
birth, was the owner and editor of a paper published at Tuscumbia. On
the maternal side she is descended from one of the Adams families of
Massachusetts, and the same stock of Everetts from which Edward Everett
and Reverend Edward Everett Hale sprang.
Helen Keller was not born deaf and blind, although, at the age of
eighteen months, when a violent fit of convulsions deprived her of the
faculties of seeing and hearing, she had not attempted to speak. When
a child, she was as notable for her stubbornness and resistance to
authority as she is to-day for her gentleness and amiability. Indeed,
it was owing to an exhibition of what seemed a very mischievous spirit
that her parents sought a special instructor for her. Having discovered
the use of a key, she locked her mother into a pantry in a distant
part of the house, where, her hammering on the door not being heard by
the servants, she remained imprisoned for several hours. Helen, seated
on the floor outside, felt the knocking on the door, and seemed to be
enjoying the situation intensely when at length jailer and prisoner
were found. She was then about six years old, and, after this escapade,
Mr. and Mrs. Keller felt that the child’s moral nature must be reached
and her mental powers cultivated, if possible.