Background
Heyer was born in the village of Waldoboro, Maine, then known as Broad Bay.
Heyer was born in the village of Waldoboro, Maine, then known as Broad Bay.
The settlement had been sacked and depopulated by Wabanaki attacks, and had been resettled with German immigrants recruited from the Rhineland. Among these settlers were the parents of Conrad Heyer, who may have been the first white children born in the settlement. During the Revolutionary War, Heyer fought for the Continental Army under the command of George Washington.
After the war Heyer 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.