A new look at Helen Keller

BOSTON -- Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod and tucked inside a family album.

The photograph, shot in July 1888, shows an 8-year-old Helen, holding Sullivan's hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll -- the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 -- according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

For more than a century the photo was hidden in an album that belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Spencer's mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.

Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1½. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.

While "doll" was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word "water," as famously depicted in the film "The Miracle Worker." Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.

"The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it's a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne's life," Seymour-Ford said.

Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller's childhood: that devotion, Sullivan's push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen's attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan's arrival as her teacher.

"It's a beautiful composition," she said. "It's not even the individual elements. It's the fact that it has all of the components."

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On the Net:

New England Historic Genealogical Society: http://www.newenglandancestors.org

Helen Keller: http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID1