The oldest person in the oldest photograph

[David G Präkel]

Daily Telegraph letters page contains conversation about earliest born person depicted in a photograph. Conversation and some images online. Best so far is Robert Morvinson, shoemaker of Stallingborough, Lincolnshire, photographed 1857, born about 1775. My own best is a photo of my GG Grandfather born in 1822 photographed sometime in the 1860s.

[Renira Lennox]

I have a photograph of my 4Xgreat-grandather born in 1770 Dorset, died 1860.

[Bill Becker]

Joseph Bauman has a collection of daguerreotypes of veterans of the Revolutionary War, and he gave an excellent presentation on the topic to The Daguerreian Society last year. There is also a book from 1864, "Last Men of the Revolution" which includes carte de visite-size albumen prints of Revolutionary War soldiers; the oldest of these may have been Adam Link, born in 1760 (according to research published in the 1968 annotated edition.)
Another possible claimant is Pierre Etienne Du Ponceau (1760 - 1844), daguerreotyped by Robert Cornelius in 1840. The daguerreotype is owned by the American Philosophical Society.
Considering how early Hill & Adamson were working, I thought they might have photographed a claimant to "the oldest in the oldest." An online source gives George Muirhead D.D. of Cramond the honor of being the oldest person in Hill's Disruption painting. Muirhead can be seen in a calotype here: http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=105670
However, I don't know his year of birth.

[Jonathan Dore]

In fact some more googling shows Christopher Howse's column in the Telegraph from 3 August has pushed the date back to a definite 1750, and an unverified 1746: see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/christopherhowse/100002071/a-photograph-of-the-oldest-man-in-england/

Images of the 1746 (and a 1749) person can be seen at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/benjaminbeck/firsts/photo1.htm

A contributor at www.neatorama.com also offers the following:
"On a Swedish historical forum called forum.skalman.nu there has been a dicussion about who’s the earliest born person that’s been photographed.

One person we are sure about is the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hahnemann).

Another person we have found is Caroline Herschel (1750-1848). The pictures don’t look like photos though, but are they based on photos? (Second picture on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Herschel and some other picture, where she’s slightly younger, which I don’t find now.) She was by the way an aunt of Sir John Frederick William Herschel who’s mentioned in the article above.

A third person is John Leland (1754-1841), but it’s unclear to us whether this is a photo or not (www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/leland.html)."

[Jonathan Dore]

There was a similar discussion here in 2004: http://gregorear.blogspot.com/2004/12/early-photography.html. Not many entries, but even just talking about US presidents they managed to get a subject born in 1767 (Andrew Jackson).

[Sebastian Dobson]

How about the Duke of Wellington, born 1 May 1769 and photographed in 1844? See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Duke_of_Wellington_Photo.jpg.

[Brett Payne]

I have two images of photos of one Edward Foster, variously described as a "centenarian" and "taken on his 102nd birthday Nov. 8th 1864" by John Burton & Sons of Derby. They are featured in my profile of this photographer here. If his age is true, then he would have been born on 8 Nov 1762.