Leavitt Hunt

Leavitt Hunt
BornFebruary 22, 1830
Brattleboro, Vermont
DiedFebruary 16, 1907 (aged 75–76)
Weathersfield, Vermont
Place of burial
Weathersfield Bow Cemetery, Weathersfield, Vermont
AllegianceUnited States of America
Union
Service/branchUnion Army
RankColonel
Unit38th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Army of the Potomac; Adjutant General's Corps; War Department
Battles/warsAmerican Civil War
Other workPhotographer, attorney, farmer, inventor, art collector
Leavitt Hunts signature
Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt photographed by Leavitt Hunt, first American to photograph the Middle East, 1852, George Eastman House

Col. Leavitt Hunt [1](1831–February 16, 1907) was a Harvard-educated attorney and photography pioneer who was one of the first people to photograph the Middle East. He and a companion, Nathan Flint Baker, traveled to Egypt, the Holy Land, Lebanon, Turkey and Greece on a Grand Tour in 1851–52, making one of the earliest photographic records of the Arab and ancient worlds, including the Great Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza, views along the Nile River, the ruins at Petra and the Parthenon in Greece.

  1. ^ Leavitt Hunt's birth name was Henry Leavitt Hunt, but he subsequently dropped the Henry.[1]