Oldest Photograph Of A US President
John Quincy Adams, son of John and Abigail Adams, served as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. A member of multiple political parties over the years, he also served as a diplomat, a Senator, and a member of the House of Representatives. This image of John Quincy Adams is the earliest known photo of a US President to still exist and was taken in March 1843 when he was 75 years old and serving as a Representative of Massachusetts’s 8th congressional district, 14 years after the end of his presidency.
There are multiple arguments for which photograph is the oldest, but the general consensus agrees that John Quincy Adams was, in fact, the subject of the oldest photograph of a US President. But it is generally accepted that the one above is the original first photo of the president. Dating from 1843, the photograph of President John Quincy Adams is a unique daguerreotype and was produced by artist Philip Haas just four years after Louis Daguerre’s radical invention was revealed to the world.
