A Visit To Ivy Green

In northwestern Alabama, the simple white clapboard house known as Ivy Green has been preserved as a museum dedicated to Helen Keller’s life and work.

- Marcia Amidon Lusted

Ivy Green was the home in which Keller grew up and where she first met Anne Sullivan, the teacher who would help her change the course of her life.

Keller’s paternal grandparents, David and Mary Fair fax Moore Keller, built Ivy Green in 1820. Located on 640 acres of land, the estate included a main house and a small cottage designed for use as the plantation office. A separate building also was constructed for the kitchen to prevent the main house from overheating with cooking fires. When the Kellers’ son, Captain Arthur H. Keller, married for a second time in 1878 (his first wife died in 1877, leaving him with two sons), he moved back to Ivy Green with new wife, Katharine “Kate” Adams.

Captain Keller had studied law before enlisting in the Confederate army during the Civil War (1861–1865). After the war, he resumed the practice of law. In 1874, he became the owner and editor of the Tuscumbia North Alabamian, and later he served as U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Alabama. Arthur and Kate initially lived in the cottage, where Helen was born in 1880. They had two more children: Mildred (born around 1886), and Phillip (born in 1891). The growing Keller family eventually moved into the main house.