Bringing Civil War history home

FALLS VILLAGE — The first Union officer killed in the Civil War was shot, not on a battlefield, but in the stairway of a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia.

Louise Levy told the story of Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth at the last of the 2024 “First Tuesday at 7” series of talks sponsored by the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society at the South Canaan Meeting House Tuesday, Sept. 3.

Judy Jacobs of the historical society said she met Levy at an exercise class. When they realized they shared passion for history, and Jacobs showed Levy a print of a lithograph of Ellsworth, Levy knew who it was.

Levy, who is on the staff at the historic Ventforth Hall in Lenox, Massachusetts and is particularly interested in Abraham Lincoln, said “I’m a history geek” by way of explanation.

Ellsworth “at one point was the most famous man in the U.S.” continued Levy.

“He was the first conspicuous casualty” on the Union side of the war.

Ellsworth’s death on May 24,1861 came about because the Marshall House Hotel in Alexandria was flying a Confederate flag that could be seen in Washington (with a field glass).

This was particularly galling because Virginia had voted to secede from the Union the day before.

Ellsworth took a small detail of soldiers, six or eight men, to the hotel to remedy the situation.

They got to the roof and removed the flag. But on the way down, they were ambushed by the hotel owner, James W. Jackson, in the stairwell.

Armed with a shotgun, Jackson shot and killed Ellsworth and was in turn shot and bayoneted by Corporal Francis Brownell.

Ellsworth was a great favorite of Lincoln, and played with Lincoln’s children.

His death not only caused the First Family personal grief, but served as a rallying cry — “Remember Ellsworth!” — for Union recruitment.

The talk was a benefit for the Falls Village Volunteer Fire Department, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The connection between the fire department and Ellsworth is this:

Levy said that Ellsworth, who was something of an autodidact, was fascinated by the French colonial soldiers in Algeria, the Zouaves.

Prior to the war, Ellsworth formed his own nationally famous drill company that borrowed both tactics and the distinctive uniforms of the Zouaves.

When Lincoln called for volunteers to defend the Union after the fall of Fort Sumter in April 1861, Ellsworth went to New York City and raised the 11th New York Volunteer Regiment, known as the Fire Zouaves because the men were recruited from the city’s volunteer firefighters.