Background
Rockwood was born in Troy, New York, in 1832 to Elihu R. Rockwood, a hotel keeper, and Martha Gardner Burnham Rockwood.
inventor journalist Photographer
Rockwood was born in Troy, New York, in 1832 to Elihu R. Rockwood, a hotel keeper, and Martha Gardner Burnham Rockwood.
His New York City studio photographed over 350,000 persons. George"s early education was at the Ballston Spa Institute, an elite boys" boarding school. Rockwood used to say that his mind was turned to inventions by meeting Samuel Morse when the inventor of the telegraph was exhibiting his instruments at the United States Hotel in Saratoga.
Rockwood was a hallboy in the hotel at that time.
Morse took a liking to the young Rockwood and took time to explain the workings of his invention. As a young adult, he worked in a printing office, and then became a reporter for the local Troy newspaper.
He took up photography in Saint Louis in 1853 and in 1858 produced the first carte de visite made in the United States. His first subject was Baron Rothschild.
Mistress August Belmont was the first woman of whom he made a vignette carte de visite.
He was an inventor as well as a photographer and made many improvements in the tools of his trade. lieutenant was in this studio that the Rockwoods met, photographed and made friends with so many of the famous men and women of their time. During the Civil War, Rockwood"s brother Elihu enlisted, and George worked as a war photographer, working out of a mobile field van.
He was fond of relating his talks with Major Anderson, General Dix, and others who had taken part in the war.
He knew Horace Greeley well and made several photographs of him, both in the studio and in the woods near Chappaqua where Greeley posed, axe in hand.