Smithsonian Article

[Rsmyth]

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth was the first officer to die in the war and one of the first casualties …may have been one of the first to be embalmed in the United States and certainly the first Civil War death to be embalmed. His funeral preparations opened the door for embalming to become commonplace during the war. Doctor Thomas Holmes who saw an opportunity and opened an office in the nations capitol at the beginning of the war was the embalmer called upon to preserve the body of Ellsworth. By wars end, Doctor Thomas Holmes who advertised his “petrifying” services and would later be called “the father of American embalming,” claimed to have preserved over 4,000 bodies by setting up battlefield embalming stations.

Henry Pratt Cattell embalmed Willie Lincoln the 11 year old son who died on Feb. 20, 1862. According to an interview Cattell gave in 1901 he went alone to the White House and embalmed the President using “Chloride of zinc.”
The firm of Brown and Alexander were paid $260 for their service and 160 to accompany the remains to Springfield.