My Journey on Lincoln's Assassination

[Steve]

Otto Eisenschiml claimed that his father, Alexander, had been an officer in the 55th Illinois.

According to 1899 State Department correspondence regarding Otto's parents' naturalization status, the father flipped his name and used Alexander as his surname in the U.S. -

           

which is confirmed by Alexander's 1871 passport application for his return to Austria:

   

There was no Eisenschiml (or its variants) that served in the Union army. There also wasn't anybody with the surname Alexander (let alone just officers) in the 55th Illinois. Eisenschiml wrote histories of Shiloh and the Illinois 55th:

https://archive.org/details/journalofill...i/page/192

It strikes me as kind of an odd thing for an historian to miss, at least a halfway good one specifically writing a history of the unit.

Now this doesn't discount the possibility that he served under the surname "Alexander" in some other unit during the war, but I have yet to find evidence of that. Although an enlistment under the name Alexander would be easier to miss.

Alexander was living in Treasure City, Nevada as a butcher during the 1870 census. I suspect he was the "E. Alexander" 28 year old merchant born in Bohemia and living in Greenwood, El Dorado County, California in the 1860 census. So right now, my guess is that he was likely living in California when the Civil War started.