Name Conrad Heyer | ||
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Died February 19, 1856, Waldoboro, Maine, United States | ||
US history that touches the present.
Conrad Heyer (1749–1856) was an American farmer and veteran of the Revolutionary War who is notable for possibly being the earliest-born person known to have been photographed. The claim is not without dispute, as a man named John Adams, who claimed to be born in 1745, was also photographed.
Heyer was born in the village of Waldoboro, Maine, then known as "Broad Bay" and part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The settlement had been sacked and depopulated by Wabanaki attacks and resettled with German immigrants recruited from the Rhineland. Among these settlers were the parents of Conrad Heyer, who also may have been the first white child born in the settlement.
During the American Revolution, Heyer fought for the Continental Army under the command of George Washington and participated in Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware before the Battle of Trenton in December 1776. After the war, he returned to Waldoboro, where he made a living as a farmer until his death in 1856. In 1852, aged 103, he posed for a daguerreotype portrait and thereby became the earliest-born person of whom a photograph is known to exist.
