Condolence Letters and Clippings

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This is a bound collection of letters, telegrams, and newspaper clippings that were sent to Helen Keller and collected following the death of Anne Sullivan Macy, her teacher and companion for forty-nine years. It includes messages of sympathy from many well-known people of the day, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Pearl S. Buck.

Anne Sullivan Macy, born in 1866, died in her home in Forest Hills, New York after a period of illness related to heart problems. She shared her home with Helen Keller and Polly Thomson until her death on October 20, 1936. More information about Anne Sullivan Macy can be found on the Perkins website at: www.perkins.org/vision-loss/helen-keller/sullivan.html.

Note: The telegrams have been transcribed with the address and other codes at the beginning. They were originally written in all capital letters without punctuation, with the word "stop" being used to signify a period at the end of a sentence. We have capitalized the first word in each sentence, as well as proper names, but have otherwise done transcriptions in lower case letters, for the ease of the reader. We have left the original spelling.

Additional Information:
More information about Anne Sullivan and Hellen Keller is available on the Perkins History Museum section of perkins.org.

Visit perkins.org/archives for more information about the Perkins Archives.

Rights and Permissions: Use of the images from the collection of Perkins School for the Blind requires written permission. For more information, please visit perkins.org/image-licensing or contact the Archivist at archives@perkins.org