deaths
May 24, 1861
Elmer E. Ellsworth, American colonel (born 1837)
Elmer E. Ellsworth
Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth was a United States Army officer, close personal friend of the 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln and, law clerk who was the first conspicuous casualty and the first Union officer to die in the American Civil War. He was killed while removing a Confederate flag from the roof of the Marshall House inn in Alexandria, Virginia.