Philip Lambrecht

Philip Lambrecht was born in Manhattan in January 1846, one of thirteen children of Anthony and Maria Magdalena Lambrecht, immigrants from Bavaria and France. His father ran a stagecoach line.

In 1861, at the age of fifteen, he enlisted in the Union Army with Company C of the 9th New York Infantry, Hawkins' Zouaves, and fought at Roanoke Island. He went on to serve in two other New York regiments until the war ended.

By 1869 he was a New York City policeman, and he became a detective in the 19th Precinct. On the morning of 26 February 1872, he and two other officers in plain clothes were searching for a gang that had nearly killed a patrolman in a First Avenue saloon the night before. At 59th Street and Second Avenue they were attacked by a group of drunken laborers. Detective Lambrecht drew his revolver and fired once, and George Laverty struck him on the back of the head with a heavy slab of marble, fracturing his skull. He died at St. Luke's Hospital on 14 March 1872, aged 26. Laverty was convicted of second-degree murder that June.

He never married. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens. A post of the Grand Army of the Republic was named for him, and in 1912 his name was among the first placed on the department's honor roll at Police Headquarters.