Anne Veronica Ward

Helen Keller was the first blind woman to graduate from a U.S. college. Just one year later, in 1905, the second blind woman to earn a degree was Anne Ward of Philadelphia.

Her story began in Glasgow, Scotland but her family moved when she was three years old. Her father, a stone mason, settled with his wife and four daughters in South Philly. At the age of 12, her parents decided she should leave school and help support the family by working as a servant at $2.50 a week.

An attack of meningitis left her totally blind by the time she was 16. She was sent to the Pennsylvania Institute for the Instruction of the Blind (PIIB) which, in 1946, was renamed Overbrook School for the Blind. Her enrollment there coincided with the introduction of American Braille at the school. Anne not only mastered the tactile writing and reading system, she would eventually teach it to hundreds, perhaps even thousands of others.

It’s often said that a person can accomplish just about anything if they have one person who believes in them. For Anne, that person was her principal, Elizabeth Roe Dunning. She saw something special in her, tutored her rigorously after classes, and worked to help her win admission to Vassar College. Her graduation portrait, shown above, is from the 1905 yearbook, which lists her address as 1844 Sigel Street in Philadelphia’s West Passyunk neighborhood.

The next obstacle was to find employment. She soon found it in Wilmington, Delaware, where a women’s advocacy group known as the New Century Club identified the area’s blind population and hired Anne to conduct regular home visits and provide training in Braille and/or vocational skills. This clipping reported on her success in less than a year’s time.

In 1907 Anne was employed as a teacher of the blind by the state of Delaware, being paid $44 a month. After three years she took a job with the New Jersey Commission for the Blind as a traveling teacher for the southern half of the state. Their records counted 1072 blind persons in the state, but only 248 were being taught, either at home or in classrooms.

She had to resign her position in early 1918 due to health issues. The  Commission reluctantly accepted, giving this glowing review in their Annual Report. She held a similar position in Canada but returned in 1921 to her alma mater, PIIB, where she remained for the next 25 years, teaching Braille, geometry, and algebra.

As incredible as it sounds, Anne worked those first ten years without a salary. She was blessed to have some friends from Vassar who contributed financially. 

Her first student was a 10-year-old girl, Mae Davidow, who had just lost her sight, and Anne’s assignment was to teach her to read Braille before moving on to the usual academic studies. Mae was a quick learner and, as an adult, she also became an instructor at the school. Mae continued earning college degrees, culminating in 1960 at Temple University where she became the nation’s first blind woman to receive the PhD. degree.

Throughout her career, Anne took advantage of many public speaking engagements to educate the sighted world and advocate for the vision-impaired. She presented papers at meetings of the American Association of Instructors for the Blind about teaching social skills to blind children. She was also a member of the Pennsylvania Federation of the Blind, the Pennsylvania State Education Association, and the American Association of Workers for the Blind.

Before she retired from Overbrook in 1946, Anne found great satisfaction in helping the returning soldiers who had lost their sight in World War II to read Braille. She lived the next 25 years at the Chapin Memorial Home for the Aged Blind, then located at 6713 Woodland Avenue. 

The home was named after a pioneering former principal of Overbrook. After her death from heart disease, Anne was buried in part of Section 140 that had been purchased by the home for the use of its residents. The life stories of two others buried there include one of William Chapin’s students, Jessie Gutzlaff, and one of the Chapin Home’s founders, John Francis Maher, giving further insight into the school, the home, and the lives of Philadelphia’s visually impaired.

The greatest tribute to Anne’s life of service is shown in the lives she touched. At the time of her death, six of the 60 faculty members at Overbrook were students she had taught and mentored. Her philosophy was in agreement with this quote often used by the first blind woman with a college degree, Helen Keller, “Happiness is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy cause.”