Answer:
Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and crusader for the handicapped. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, She lost her sight and hearing at the age of nineteen months to an illness now believed to have been scarlet fever.
Explanation:
Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama.[3] Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green,[1] that Helen's grandfather had built decades earlier.[4] She had four siblings: two full siblings, Mildred Campbell (Keller) Tyson and Phillip Brooks Keller, and two older half-brothers from her father's prior marriage, James McDonald Keller and William Simpson Keller.[5][6]
Her father, Arthur Henley Keller (1836–1896),[7] spent many years as an editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian and had served as a captain in the Confederate Army.[3][4] The family were part of the slaveholding elite before the war, but lost status later.[4] Her mother, Catherine Everett (Adams) Keller (1856–1921), known as "Kate",[8] was the daughter of Charles W. Adams, a Confederate general. Her paternal lineage was traced to Casper Keller, a native of Switzerland.[9][10] One of Helen's Swiss ancestors was the first teacher for the deaf in Zurich. Keller reflected on this irony 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."[9]
At 19 months old, Keller contracted an unknown illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain",[11] which might have been scarlet fever or meningitis.[3][12] The illness left her both deaf and blind. She lived, as she recalled in her autobiography, "at sea in a dense fog".[13]
At that time, Keller was able to communicate somewhat with Martha Washington, the two-years older daughter of the family cook, who understood her signs;[14]:11 by the age of seven, Keller had more than 60 home signs to communicate with her family, and could distinguish people by the vibration of their footsteps.[15]
