George G. Rockwood
Back in 2019, I was at a conference in Nashville and discovered George Rockwood quite by accident. Looking for a reference photo of Theodore Roosevelt, I found one… photographed by a Rockwood! That’s my maiden name!
Keep scrolling for the last four digits of my social security number and my first pet’s name.
Ever since I came across George Rockwood, I’ve been wanting to pull together something about him and now (more than six years later), I finally got the nudge I needed. I’m currently reading Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. When I looked for a reference photo for Thurlow Weed, I stumbled on a photo by Rockwood & Co. I’m not sure if George Rockwood, his brother, or his son photographed him nor does it matter to me. What does matter to me is that I finally got the nudge to do something with George Rockwood! Hooray!
Oh for crying out loud… I had a typo in the doodle! It’s George G. not George C. But let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on his branding. Love, love, love. The front and back are both incredible.
A few things about George Gardner Rockwood:
(mostly from his Wikipedia listing)
born in 1832 in Troy, NY
his dad (Elihu) was a hotel keeper and his mom’s name was Martha Gardner Burnham Rockwood (I assume that’s where his middle name comes from)
attended an elite boys’ boarding school — Ballston Spa Institute, which I have not been able to find anything about in my very limited attempts
was a singer — “the oldest living American boy chorister is Mr. George G. Rockwood, who sang in this choir as a boy sixty years ago, and who is singing yet.” (according to Frederick Dean in Boy Choristers — and there’s a picture of him as a boy!)
his uncle Warren B. Rockwood was “America’s first countertenor” — a word with which I was unfamiliar; it’s a male singer that can get up to female ranges (I’m paraphrasing and hopefully not losing any meaning. Think: Frankie Valli belting out Sherry Baby)
meeting Samuel Morris (at United States Hotel in Saratoga, where Rockwood was working) had a big impact on his life — he became interested in inventing
got into photography in St. Louis; made the first carte de visite in the U.S. (of Baron Rothschild; the first woman he made one for was August Belmont)
moved to NYC and teamed up with his brother, Colonel Elihu R. Rockwood; their studio was in the Roosevelt Building
while Elihu enlisted during the Civil War, George became a war photographer
was a photographer for nearly 60 years, photographing 350,000 people
(My husband made fun of me yesterday for having 35,000+ photos on my phone; seems like maybe it’s just in my genes? That’s what I’m going with anyhow.)had seven children with his wife Araminta Bouton, including George H. Rockwood (who also became a photographer and worked with his father)
had two patents
Elihu died of heart disease in their studio at age 64
George filed for bankruptcy after Elihu died
Those he photographed included:
General Winfield Scott
General Winfield Scott Hancock
Martin Van Buren
Rutherford B. Hayes
Horace Greeley
John Adams Dix (I wasn’t familiar with Dix, but I recognized his name from Rockwood’s bio when he popped up in Licoln!)
Buffalo Bill Cody
Charles Dickens
Ulysses S. Grant
Clara Morris
Wild Bill Hickok
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
Edwin Booth (John Wilkes Booth’s older brother) posing as Hamlet. Booth posing as Hamlet. Not Rockwood dressed like Hamlet and photographing Booth. That would be weird. (Check out the front and back of the photo here. It’s worth the click, I promise!) He also photographed Booth not dressed as Hamlet.
Look! I sort of drew Edwin Booth.
It’s not my best work, but still! It counts:
Inspired by Booth by Karen Joy Fowler; check out more doodles and tangents here. The highlighted Booths were all actors. Only one was an assassin.
Overlap!
Some of our other subjects overlapped as well. Here’s a sprinkling of other people that Rockwood photographed and I doodled. This makes me feel inexplicably special.
Thurlow Weed (doodle inspired by The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers; find more doodles here)
One of these guys is definitely Winfield Scott. Maybe that first guy, too. Fun fact: I used to think Winfield Scott and Winfield Scott Hancock were the same person. They’re not. But I was delighted to learn that Rockwood photographed both! Here’s the latter.
To be continued…?
I haven’t figured out how yet, but George and I must be related. There are too many overlaps for this to be a coincidence.
PS
From A History of the Rockwoods: From the Time They First Emigrated to This Country, to the Present Time, 1855:
“There is a tradition among the Rockwoods, that two brothers originally emigrated to this country. There was a difference in the orthography, some spelling their names Rocket, Rockett, and others spelling their names Rockwood, and this occurred in the same family; so it is assumed that the names Rockett, Rockwood and Rockwell, are in truth the same.”
What’s that now?
Sometimes they spelled it “Rocket” and sometimes “Rockwood”? Friends, these are not spelling inconsistencies.
These are different words.
I’ll tell you what, though. If I was born Heather Rocket, I sure as heck wouldn’t be going by Heather Rogers now.
But I digress. The point is that I have pages from a document titled A History of the Rockwoods: From the Time They First Emigrated to This Country, to the Present Time, 1855 and I see no George or Elihu or even Warren and that’s incredibly disappointing. How do people have the patience to dig into ancestry? I keep getting lost. And frustrated.
PPS
I don’t want to end on a total bummer, so check this out — George Gardner Rockwood, PhD wrote a little forward in Around the World with Camera. The illustration of him with a gigantic hat and equally gigantic mustache, along with his fabulous signature, are amazing.
