Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth (April 11, 1837 – May 24, 1861) was a United States Army officer and law clerk who was the first conspicuous casualty [2] and the first Union officer to die [3] in the American Civil War.

At the age of 24, as commander of the 11th New York Volunteers, also known as the First Fire Zouaves, Ellsworth became the first Union officer killed in the war. He was not just any Union...

He is best known as the first conspicuous casualty of the American Civil War, while serving in the Union Army. He grew up in Mechanicville, New York and lived for a time in New York City, New York. In 1854 he moved to Rockford, Illinois where he worked for a patent agency.

Prior to his becoming the first conspicuous casualty of the Civil War, Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth led a short but interesting life. During his 24 years, he was a lawyer, a colonel, and a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln, whom he met in Springfield, Illinois after moving there to work in Lincoln's office and who he followed to Washington.

Ellsworth moved to Chicago in 1856, where he met Charles A DeVilliers, a surgeon who served in the French Zouave regiment during the Crimean War in 1854. Now in Chicago, he happened upon young Ellsworth and mesmerized the boy with the training and tactics of the Zouaves.

At the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, the house was the site of the killing of Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth during the Union Army's takeover of Alexandria. Ellsworth was a popular and highly prominent officer and a close friend of President Abraham Lincoln.

Mar 30, 2011 · Col. Elmer Ellsworth became the first officer to die in the Civil War when he was gunned down by an innkeeper in Alexandria, Virginia. Corbis. On May 23, 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union....

His pre-Civil War fame as the leader of the Chicago Zouave Cadets popularized the Zouave movement in America and awakened interest in the military at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war. Ellsworth’s dedication to the Union cause led him to raise the first volunteer regiment in the North.

On May 24, 1861, 24-year-old Elmer E. Ellsworth—colonel of the 11th New York Infantry—was shot and killed by the pro-secessionist proprietor of the Marshall House, an inn located in Alexandria, Virginia, after the young officer removed a Confederate flag that flew from its roof.

On May 24, 1861, 24-year-old Elmer E. Ellsworth, colonel of 11th New York Infantry, led a group of his men from their camp in Washington, D.C., into Alexandria, after observing a Confederate flag flying from the roof of a building in the Virginia town.