[5][6][7][8][9] Cashier was very elderly and disoriented (suffering from dementia)[9] when interviewed about immigrating to the United States and enlisting in the army, and had always been evasive about early life; therefore, the available narratives are often contradictory.

[2] Typically, the youth's uncle or stepfather was said to have dressed his charge in male clothing in order to find work in an all-male shoe factory in Illinois.

[10]: 52  Sallie Hodgers, Cashier's mother, was known to have died prior to 1862, by which time her child had traveled as a stowaway to Belvidere, Illinois, and was working as a farmhand to a man named Avery.

[16] Many soldiers from Belvidere participated in the Battle of Shiloh as members of the Fifteenth Illinois Volunteers, where the Union had suffered heavy losses.

[15]: 380–381 The regiment was part of the Army of the Tennessee under Ulysses S. Grant and fought in approximately forty battles,[14] including the Siege of Vicksburg.

In June 1863, still during the siege, Cashier contracted chronic diarrhea and entered a military hospital, somehow managing to evade detection.

[10]: 55–56 In the second quarter of 1864, the regiment was also present at the Red River Campaign under General Nathaniel Banks, and in June 1864 at the Battle of Brice's Crossroads in Guntown, Mississippi, where they suffered heavy casualties.

[10]: 56–57 [15]: 382–383 Following a period to recuperate and regroup following the debacle at Brice, the 95th, now a seasoned and battle-hardened regiment, saw additional action in late 1864 through early 1865 in the Franklin–Nashville Campaign, at the battles of Spring Hill and Franklin, the defense of Nashville, and the pursuit of General Hood.

[10]: 57 [9] After the war, Cashier returned to Belvidere, Illinois, for a time, working for Samuel Pepper and continuing to live as a man.

[10]: 59  Cashier lived there until an obvious deterioration of mind began to take place, and was subsequently moved to the Watertown State Hospital for the Insane in East Moline, Illinois, in March 1914.

The government supplied the typical small gravestone used to mark a veteran's resting place which was inscribed "Albert D. J. Cashier, Co. G, 95 Ill.

None of the would-be heirs proved convincing, and the estate of about $282 (after payment of funeral expenses)[2][19] was deposited in the Adams County, Illinois, treasury.

In 1977 local residents erected a larger second headstone, inscribed with both names, on the same plot at Sunny Slope cemetery in Saunemin, Illinois.

[22] In Michael Leali's 2022 young adult novel, The Civil War of Amos Abernathy, Cashier stands in for a pen pal.