BOSTON — Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken.
The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8- year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.
Experts on Keller believe it could be the earliest photo of the two 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 has the photo.
“It’s really one of the best images I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Helen Selsdon of the American Federation for the Blind.
For more than a century, the photograph was hidden in an album that belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87- year-old man in Waltham.
Spencer’s mother often stayed on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., for a vacation.
