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Helen Keller photograph collection

The photographs in this collection span the life of Helen Keller, from her early childhood to her years at Perkins School for the Blind and beyond.

Creator:

Perkins School for the Blind

Date Range:

1886-1968

Call Number:

AG62

Abstract:

This collection includes photographs from the Helen Keller Photograph Collection (AG62) detailing the lives of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy, as well as Nella Braddy Henney, and Polly Thomson.  It spans the time from Annie Sullivan’s arrival at the Keller household, through the end of Helen Keller’s life, and documents Keller’s years as a student at Perkins School for the Blind, her friendships with celebrities, such as Charlie Chaplin, Alexander Graham Bell, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and her participation in world affairs.  It also includes such events as the dedication of the Keller-Sullivan building at Perkins School for the Blind, Henney’s friendship with Sullivan and Keller, and Keller and Sullivan’s time on the lecture circuit, including their short time on the vaudeville circuit.  Other special memorabilia include a copy of a brochure advertising the silent film, Deliverance.

Extent:

1 linear foot

Language:

English

Processed by:

Stefanie Maclin, Charlotte Cushman and Molly Stothert-Maurer ; Biography updated by Susanna Coit, 2022

Biographical/Historical notes:

Anne Sullivan (1866-1936)

Anne Sullivan was born in April 1866, in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, the oldest child of Irish immigrants, Thomas and Alice Sullivan. At the age of five, Anne contracted trachoma which resulted in severe vision loss. After Alice’s death when Anne was eight years old, Thomas was unable to care for his children and abandoned them. Anne and her brother Jimmy were sent to the Tewksbury Almshouse, where Jimmy died after three months. While at the Almshouse, Sullivan underwent a series of eye operations in the hope of treating her trachoma. Later in her life, an eye operation successfully restored enough of her vision to enable her to read print, but nonetheless her eyes would plague her for the rest of her life.  

In 1880, at age thirteen, despite being uneducated and illiterate upon entering, Sullivan quickly rose to the top of her class at the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind (now called Perkins School for the Blind). In June 1886, she graduated as the valedictorian of her class. Shortly after her graduation, Perkins director Michael Anagnos sent Sullivan to Tuscumbia, Alabama to teach Helen Keller, whose parents had contacted Perkins in search of a teacher for their daughter.

Helen Keller (1880-1968)

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama to retired army Captain Arthur Keller and his second wife, Kate. Helen had a younger brother (Phillips Brooks) and sister (Mildred), and two older half brothers. When she was nineteen months old, she became ill with a very high fever that ultimately left her deaf and blind. Doctors at the time diagnosed this as “brain fever” or “brain congestion,” but experts today believe that she most likely suffered from scarlet fever or meningitis.

Helen Keller developed her own system of hand gestures to communicate with her family and by the time she was seven she had nearly 60 such gestures.  Nonetheless, she was frequently frustrated by the inability to express herself.  When Anne Sullivan arrived to teach her in 1887, Keller quickly learned to fingerspell, as well as to read braille and raised type, and to write in block letters.

After a year and a half of homeschooling, Sullivan decided that Keller would benefit from the resources of a school. In 1888, Sullivan brought Keller to study at Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind (now Perkins School for the Blind). She became a student at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York in 1894 before attending the Cambridge School for Young Ladies in 1896 to prepare for Radcliffe College. In 1904 she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe and became the first person with deafblindness to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Helen Keller was a prolific writer, publishing 14 books and numerous articles.  She traveled across the globe, advocating for social issues, such as women’s suffrage and rights for people who are blind or deafblind. She received numerous awards throughout her life for her humanitarian efforts.

Sources of information:

McGinnity, B.L., Seymour-Ford, J. and Andries, K.J. (2004) Anne Sullivan. Perkins History Museum, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA. 

McGinnity, B.L., Seymour-Ford, J. and Andries, K.J. (2004) Helen Keller. Perkins History Museum, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA. 

Restrictions:

The Perkins Archives reserves the right to deny physical access to materials available in a digital format. 

It is the responsibility of the user to obtain permission to publish from the owner of the copyright (the institution, the creator of the record, the author or his/her transferees, heirs, legates, or literary executors). The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Perkins School for the Blind, its officers, employees, and agents from and against all claims made by any person asserting that he or she is an owner of copyright.

Credit line/Citation:

AG62 Helen Keller Photo Collection. Perkins School for the Blind Archives, Watertown, MA.

Scope/Contents:

Collection contains photographs spanning the ime of Anne Sullivan’s arrival at the Keller household in Tuscumbia, Alabama through the end of Helen Keller’s life. Subjects include Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy, Nella Braddy Henney, Polly Thomson, and others. The photographs document Keller’s friendships with celebrities including Charlie Chaplin, Alexander Graham Bell, and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as her involvement in world affairs. Includes photographs documenting Sullivan and Keller’s time on the vaudeville circuit, as well as the film Deliverance.

Arrangement:

Arranged in 2 boxes.

List of digital collections related to Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan that are available online.

AG151 Nella Braddy Henney Collection. Perkins School for the Blind Archives, Watertown, MA.

Helen Keller Collection on Flickr

Container List:

Box 1

  • B1:F1 : Anne Sullivan (later Anne Sullivan Macy), alone [1880s, 1930s], 16 photographs, many duplicates.
  • B1:F2 : Helen Keller as a child, with others [1890s] 7 photographs, some duplicates.
  • B1:F3 : Helen Keller as a child, with Anne Sullivan Macy [1880s-1890s] 13 photographs, a reproduction negative and photomechanical reproductions, many duplicates. 
  • B1:F4 : Helen Keller as a child, alone, or with her dog (Lioness) [1880s-1890s], 12 photographs, some duplicates. 
  • B1:F5 : Helen Keller with Edith Thomas, Thomas Stringer and Elizabeth Robbins [circa 1890, circa 1950], 8 photographs, many duplicates.  [See also the Students with Deafblindness Photo Collection for more photographs and research.]
  • B1:F6 :  Helen Keller as an adolescent, alone [circa 1899]  7 photographs
  • B1:F7 : Helen Keller as a young adult [1900s-1910s],  9 items, includes photographs, postcards and publications. Includes one photograph of Helen Keller with Phiz, a Boston Terrier, who was a gift from her Radcliffe classmates, with the inscription, “To Dr. Bridgman From Helen Keller” in Keller’s handwriting, dated March 1905. Also included is a graduation photo of Keller from Radcliffe, dressed in her cap and gown. 
  • B1:F8 : Helen Keller as a young adult, with others [circa 1925 – 1930]  5 items, photographs and newspaper clippings. Includes: a photograph of Helen Keller with Alexander Graham Bell; a newspaper clipping with photograph of Helen visiting Luther Burbank, the famous Plant Wizard; newspaper clipping shows Helen meeting the Indian poet, sage, and educationalist, Sir Rabindranath Tagore; photograph of Helen with her mother, Kate Keller, and teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy.
  • B1:F9 : Helen Keller, with Anne Sullivan Macy, Polly Thomson, and Charlie Chaplin [circa 1919], 2 photographs and 1 negative taken when the three women were in California to film Deliverance.
  • B1:F10 : Helen Keller, as a young adult, with Anne Sullivan Macy [undated], 2 photographs
  • B1:F11 : Helen Keller, as a middle-aged woman, alone [circa 1932], 3 photographs.

Box 2

  • B2:F12 : Helen Keller, visiting blinded veterans during and after World War 2 [circa 1944]  4 photographs. One photograph also has soldiers Corp. Peter K .Lucas and Ralph E. Dickerson.
  • B2:F13 : Helen Keller, middle-aged, with others. [1918, 1921,1931, n. d.],  8 photographs.  Has a second photograph of Helen meeting with Sir Rabindranath Tagore, two photographs of their time in California, and two copies of the photograph of Helen Keller tries the new Visagraph at the 1931 World Conference of Work for the Blind, in New York.  Several men look on as she tries the new device, including inventor, Mr. Robert Naumburg. 
  • B2:F14 : Helen Keller in her later life, alone or with her dog [1950s]  7 photographs and postcards. Includes photograph later used as an image for the 1980 World Conference for the Blind.  Also includes one photograph of Helen Keller with her Akita dog, Kamikaze.
  • B2:F15 : Helen Keller in her later life, with others/Public Events  [1950s], 9 photographs. Banquet at Perkins featuring Dr. Waterhouse, the then-director, Helen Keller accepting the gift of a Perkins Brailler from Dr. Waterhouse, with young children, at the White House, with Perkins student Linda Reynolds, dancing with a serviceman, and Martha’s Vineyard with Eleanor Roosevelt.
  • B2:F16 :  Helen Keller late in life [circa1961], 4 color photographs.  Features two photographs from Helen’s 1961 visit to Martha’s Vineyard, and two portraits reading a braille book.
  • B2:F17 : Anne Sullivan, with biographer Nella Braddy Henney, and others. [late 1920s-1930s], 7 photographs, some duplicates. 
  • B2:F18 : Tewksbury Almshouse: Keller-Sullivan Macy statue unveiling ceremony [1985] 13 color photographs. Photographs of the Almshouse, various speakers, and the unveiling of the memorial, a statue replicating the famous scene by the water pump. 
  • B2:F19 : Ivy Green, Perkins and Brewster, MA Home [undated, 1936, 1987], 10 photographs, many duplicates. Two postcards of Ivy Green, Helen Keller’s birthplace, and many images of Brewster, MA home that belonged to Mrs. Sophia Hopkins, a house matron at Perkins, where Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan summered.
  • B2:F20 : Slide and Misc. [undated, 1887, 1901] 4 black and white slides, and one image of newspaper headline “Obstacles to Helen Keller’s Marrying” for Doubleday & Co. publication.  Slides include Helen Keller, Alexander Graham Bell, Anne Sullivan.
  • B2:F21 : Pamphlets/Publications [n. d., 1920, 1987]  5 items.  Includes pamphlet from Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy’s first lecture tour, on the subject, “The Heart and the Hand, or the right use of our senses.”  Also one for the release of the film Deliverance, billing Keller as “the 8th Wonder of the World”.  Third pamphlet is from Perkins School for the Blind, dated 1987, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Sullivan’s arrival in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
  • B2:F22 : Formal portrait [n. d.], 1 color photograph. Later in life with blue dress, reading a large braille volume.
  • B2:F23 : Keller/Thomson with geese [n. d.], 3 black and white photographs. Helen Keller and Polly Thomson at edge of water feeding large geese. Note on envelope reads: Japan? California?
  • B2:F24 : With blinded WWII veteran, [1944], 1 black and white photograph (reproduction, original in collection). Helen Keller and Polly Thomson at the bedside of a soldier blinded during the second World War.  In addition to the officer in the bed, another stands directly to the side of Keller.  The photograph has the following inscription: “To Nella, who has eyes to read our hearts and the meaning of the supreme experience we are living through.  Helen Keller”;, and is also signed by Polly Thomson.
  • B2:F25 : Braddy Henney photographs, [1938, n. d.], 12 photographs and 3 documents. Photographs from Forest Hills, and misc. images of Keller and Sullivan.
  • B2:F26 : Boat trip [1951], 10 photographs. Keller and Polly Thomson on a boat trip with an unidentified family.
  • B2:F27 : Reproduction prints [n. d.],18 photographs, misc. prints spanning Keller lifetime.
  • B2:F28 : Misc, [n. d.], 3 photographs. Keller and Sullivan in doll shop, and Keller and Polly Thomson on the telephone.
  • B2:F29 : Louis Betts painting [1953], 1 photograph and 1 letter. Photograph of painting made by Louis Betts of Keller-Sullivan portrait with Keller’s hand on Sullivan’s lips.
  • B2:F30 : Tewksbury Almshouse statue dedication [1985, 1992], 25 color photographs, one letter. Statue of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan by Mico Kaufman titled “Water” outside of the Tewksbury Almshouse.

Provenance:

Unknown

Subject headings:

  • Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847-1922
  • Grummon, Stuart Edgar, 1901-1960
  • Henney, Keith, 1896-1990
  • Henney, Nella Braddy, 1894-1973
  • Keller, Helen, 1880-1968
  • Keller, Kate Adams
  • Macy, John Albert, 1877-1932
  • Sullivan, Anne, 1866-1936
  • Thomson, Polly   

Existence and Location of Copies

Links to digitized reproductions of many photographs in the collection on Flickr are available on the Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Collections page.

Explore more resources from the Archives

Learn more about our collections, including digitized materials, and resources related to the history of Perkins School for the Blind and the history of education for people with blindness or deafblindness.