Adolph Proskauer

He emigrated to Alabama in 1854 and was a bookkeeper in Mobile. On 27 May 1861 at age 22 he mustered as Corporal, Company C, 12th Alabama Infantry. He was promoted to Sergeant on 1 December and elected First Lieutenant at the reorganization of 28 April 1862. He was promoted to Captain on 24 May 1862.

He was wounded in the abdomen in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862.

He returned to duty in January 1863. He was wounded at Chancellorsville, VA in May 1863 and was promoted to Major of the Regiment to date from 15 January. He was wounded again, slightly, at Gettysburg, PA in July, where he commanded the regiment as senior officer present.

I can see him now, in mental view, as he nobly carried himself at Gettysburg, standing coolly and calmly, with a cigar in his mouth, at the head of the 12th Alabama amid a perfect rain of bullets, shot and shell. He was the personification of intrepid gallantry, of imperturbable courage.

He went to St. Louis and was a merchant, prominent in the Jewish community there.

Service from the Alabama Civil War Service Database.1 Details in Robert N. Rosen's The Jewish Confederates (2012), source also of the quote above, from Captain Robert Park of the 12th to Proskauer's widow Julia in a letter at the Major's death in 1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from the photograph in the Alabama Archives.2

11/11/1838; Breslau, GERMANY

12/13/1900; St. Louis, MO; burial in New Mount Sinai Cemetery and Mausoleum, Affton, MO