Helen Keller was 8 years old, holding the hand of her teacher Anne Sullivan, and cradling a doll in the 1888 photograph was discovered 120 years after it was taken in Cape Cod. The photograph is especially significant because it may be the first photograph taken of Keller and Sullivan, and is the only photograph of Keller with a doll, which is the first word Sullivan taught Keller to sign. In June, Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man whose mother spent her summers in Cape Cod and knew Keller, donated photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The staff recently realized the significance of the photo.

Helen Keller had been left blind and deaf after an illness, most likely Scarlet Fever, when she was 19 months. On, what Keller describes as “the most important day I can remember in my life,” Sullivan came to the Kellers’ home, where she was hired to teach Helen. Sullivan was 20 years old and had graduated from the Perkins School for the Blind. Sullivan, who had been blind but regained her site after several operations, taught Helen language by spelling words manually into her hand.

Keller was a brilliant and fast pupil, mastering the alphabet, learning to speak, attending Radcliffe college and was the first deafblind person to graduate from college, which she did Cum Laude. Sullivan would sign book after book into the hand of this voracious reader. On top of these outstanding achievements, was an author and an anti-war activist who advocated workers’ rights, women’s suffrage, and socialism. Impressed? Inspired? Then Visit the American Foundation for the Blind where you can read the autobiography Keller wrote when she was 21 The Story of My Life. And see the movie about Keller and Sullivan, The Miracle Worker, directed by Arthur Penn, and starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke