The "Jersey Centenarian," age 103, was photographed in 1848 sitting beside his great-grandson (a toddler). I saw this in a book and have never been able to find the picture on the Web.

http://www.historicamericanprints.com/history.htm has a photograph of Conrad Heyer, born in 1749. He died in 1856 (107 years old!) can you imagine? A photograph of a man who knew people born in the 1600s!

One star is a brigadier general, not major general. Unless it was different way back when.

Talking about the oldest person ever photographed, I've found the page

http://gregorear.blogspot.com/2004/12/early-photography.html

Perhaps it's them?

He is wearing the shoulder scales of a Major General (note the star), to which rank he was commissioned in 1848, three years before he died in 1851. I'm guessing the photo was made right after his promotion in 1848.

Amazing -- that we are looking at a face that breathed the same air as George Washington, for example--the portraits all seem a bit stuffy and so remote. But this is living history.

Wow, one of the best photos yet, great history speaks from this portrait, mnnn, that nose, slightly bent to his left, perhaps, a political skirmish, or a good old-fashioned saloon disagreement?

Ol' Hugh has quite a resume. Seems that this early American war hero was done in by modern technology: he was thrown from his carriage when it became entangled in telegraph wires.

I don't believe General Brady is the oldest person to be photographed - but I wonder who is.

[Hugh, born in 1768, died in 1851 at age 82. If you mean who is the person with the earliest birth year ever to be photographed, probably someone born in the 1740s. - Dave]