The following brief biography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library website supports a collection of Ignatius Wadsworth Brock’s work held there:

Ignatius (Nace) Wadsworth Brock was born on a farm in Jones County, North Carolina in 1866. He studied art at Cooper Union in New York City and worked as an apprentice in the New Bern, North Carolina photographic studio of Edward Gerock. Brock was a talented painter and photographer. He also wrote poetry. Around 1897, Brock opened a photographic studio in Asheville, N.C. after visiting the town on his honeymoon. He lived there until his death in 1950.
Nace Brock is the most notable North Carolina photographer to embrace the pictorial movement in photography. His 1899 photograph Return of the Sheep exemplifies the pictorial style. Photographs of landscapes and women comprise some of Brock’s best work. He also photographed Asheville novelist Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) when Wolfe was seven years of age. Brock was the acknowledged mentor of North Carolina photographer Bayard Wootten (1875-1959).

A further lengthy biographical account of Brock appears in the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. An excerpt:

A free spirit with more than a touch of the bohemian, Brock grudgingly settled into the routine of the photographic studio after his marriage in 1897 to Ora Koonce of Jones County. The couple was still honeymooning in the mountains when he decided to settle in Asheville and open his first studio on Biltmore Avenue near the old Swannanoa-Berkely Hotel. Initially he signed his work “Ignatius Brock”; he shortened this designation to “Nace” and eventually settled for “N. Brock,” the signature that was best known across the United States and in Europe. (1.)

1. excerpt: Brock biography: by Dick Brown: in: Dictionary of North Carolina Biography:edited by William S. Powell: The University of North Carolina Press: 1979: p. 231