Joseph Francis Gedney (November 4, 1828 - October 5, 1903) was a French-English-American engraver, printer, and lithographer. Gedney was born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, France, to a distinguished British family of Lincolnshire. He emigrated to the United States as a child, arriving at age 2 in 1831, in the wake of his mother's untimely 1830 death. It is unclear where he studied engraving, but he established himself on Maryland Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1854, opening an engraving establishment. During the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), he served in the Union Army under John Aaron Rawlins (1831 - 1869). He completed both private and government contracts, including engraving and printing William Keeler's seminal 1867 National Map of the Territory of the United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Gedney went on to acquire several important government printing contracts, which he retained until his 1903 death.
