Irish-American soldier Albert Cashier was BOTD in 1843. Born Jennie Hodgers in Clogherhead, County Louth in Ireland, little is known about her family or early life. She is believed to have left Ireland in his teens, probably with her stepfather or uncle, travelling as a stowaway on a ship to America. The family settled in Belvidere, Illinois, where Cashier began wearing men’s clothes to secure work in a shoe factory. In 1862, at the height of the American Civil War, the 18 year-old Hodgers enlisted in the 9th Illinois Infantry, using the name “Albert D. J. Cashier”. After training as an infantryman in Rockford, he was sent to the front lines of battle in Columbus, Kentucky and later to Jackson, Tennessee under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant. Cashier is thought to have fought in 40 battles, including the Siege of Vicksburg, where he was captured by Confederate forces, managing to escape and return to his regiment. Described as small and reserved by his fellow soldiers, he managed to evade detection as a female even after treatment in a military hospital for chronic diarrahea. At the war’s end in 1865, Cashier was honourably discharged and returned to Belvidere, continuing to live as a man and working as a farmhand, and claiming an Army veteran’s pension. In 1911, he was hit by a car, resulting in a broken leg and making him unable to work. He was moved to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois, where he lived for three years, eventually developing dementia. In 1914, he was moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane, where the staff identified him as female and required him to wear women’s clothes. He was subsequently investigated for fraud by the Veterans’ Pension Board, who concluded that his pension payments should continue for life. He died in 1915, aged 71, and was buried with full military honours, dressed in his Army uniform. His life has inspired a series of biographies, plays and novels, and his home in Illinois is now an historic site. In recent years, queer scholars have argued that Cashier should be identified as a trans man, based on his living as male for 53 years.