Conrad Heyer

Heyer was born in the village of Waldoboro, 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.[4] His father died the winter before he was born. His mother, Catharina, remarried in 1772/73 to a German immigrant. In his youth, Heyer was a member of the German Lutheran Church.[5]

During the American Revolution Heyer fought for the Continental Army in the 25th Regiment, according to his pension filed in 1819 and several witnesses. He enlisted in December 1775 and was honorably discharged a year later, in mid-December 1776 at Fishkill. There is no historical record of any other service in the army. Later claims, such as that he participated in Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware in December 1776 or served in the Army until 1778, cannot be confirmed.[6]

He married Mary Weber in 1776, with whom he had ten children. After the war, he returned to Waldoboro, where he made a living as a farmer until his death in 1856. He was buried with full military honors.[5][7]

Around 1852, at the claimed age of 103, Heyer posed for a daguerreotype portrait. He may therefore be the earliest-born person of whom a photograph taken while alive is known to exist.[8] The claim is not without dispute, however; several others were photographed who may have been born earlier. These include a woman named Mary Munroe Sanderson, who may have been born in 1748; a shoemaker named John Adams, who claimed to be born in 1745; a Revolutionary War veteran named Baltus Stone, with a claim of 1744; and an enslaved man named Caesar who, according to the inscription on his marble tombstone, was born in 1737 and died in 1852 — which would mean he lived to be 115 years old.[9]