This rare photograph shows Emerguildo (right) and his adopted brother James Winfield Nagle. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN NAGLE
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on October 17, 2021.
POTTSVILLE - Emerguildo. The name rose softly from the grass in Pottsville’s Presbyterian Cemetery. Emerguildo. The name itself is a thing of grandeur, crimson plush and flecked with gold. It is a proud bugle call of a name. It is Spanish in origin, meaning either “complete sacrifice” or “immense treasure.” Since its owner died, the name had faded, sunken into the earth.
The gravestone of Emerguildo laid in earth. PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN HOPTAK
It was an uncommon name for a resident of Pottsville in the 19th-century. John Hoptak thought so too. Hoptak, a park ranger and education specialist at Gettysburg National Military Park, grew up surrounded by the names of the noble dead. When he was a child, his parents would take him to cemeteries in his native Schuylkill County. Hoptak would fill notebooks with the names, dates and regiments on the tombstones of the Civil War veterans. One veteran, however, was untraceable; Emerguildo.
Hoptak (left) and historian Tom Shay, of Cressona, look at Emerguildo’s old headstone.
Through years of research, Hoptak discovered that Emerguildo was a Mexican orphan and the adopted son of Pottsville’s own Civil War general, James Nagle. Emerguildo, known as “the young Mexican bugler,” was a private in the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment and a bugler in the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry.
“I have the honor to make application to have Emerguildo Marquis, Bugler in Captain White’s Company 3rd PA Cavalry, detailed as a bugler and orderly,” Nagle wrote in an 1862 letter. “He is a Mexican boy that I brought along from Mexico.”
The body of Emerguildo lay beneath Hoptak, and the people of Pottsville, for over a century without anyone noticing. Hoptak and his family dug up the old tombstone and with it Emerguildo’s memory. Shrouded Veterans, a nonprofit dedicated to replacing old veteran tombstones, reached out to Hoptak. Shrouded Veterans founder Frank Jastrzembski was writing a book about the lives of Civil War generals, including Nagle. Jastrzembski was moved by the sorry state of Emerguildo’s grave and applied to the VA for a new one.
Emerguildo‘s new gravestone in Pottsville’s Presbyterian Cemetery. PHOTO BY JACQUELINE DORMER
“I came across John’s blog post about Emerguildo’s story,” Jastrzembski said. “I knew it was something I had to share in my book.”
Hoptak has told Emerguildo’s story many times, first in that 2016 blog post and most recently in the October 2021 issue of Civil War Times magazine.
“There is always a lot of history that can be learned in cemeteries and from what is carved upon tombstones,” Hoptak said. “This new stone will continue to help tell Emerguildo’s story and how he served his adopted nation in its hour of great peril.”
Hoptak first came across the Emerguildo enigma in the 1990s. Then a college student, Hoptak was obsessed with the Civil War and James Nagle (he still is). When looking at Nagle’s records in the 1850 Census, he read something very unusual about one of Nagle’s children: “Emerguildo, age 11, born in Mexico.”
“I typically gravitate toward stories that are not as widely told or as widely known,” Hoptak said, “and to people whom history has overlooked or neglected. Nagle, I found to have been one of these individuals. He was Schuylkill County's foremost Civil War soldier, a man who, despite having no formal military training or education, by age 20 had organized a militia company composed of Pottsville volunteers. He was also a devoted husband and loving father. He was a man devoted to service to his family, his community and his nation.”
The gravestone of James Nagle in Pottsville’s Presbyterian Cemetery. PHOTO BY JACQUELINE DORMER
Hoptak remembered that Nagle was a veteran of the Mexican-American War, and led his company of Pennsylvania volunteers from Mexico City to Vera Cruz. Was this where he met Emerguildo? Hoptak called the National Archives in Washington, D.C., which gave him records of Emerguildo’s military service.
“A bugler played a very important role in a Civil War company,” Hoptak said. “There were literally scores of bugle calls a bugler had to learn and play whether in camp or on the battlefield, and each had to be played clearly and distinctly from every other call, lest there be confusion.”
The bugle was the soundtrack to the life and death of a Civil War soldier. Buglers like Emerguildo woke the men up each day, and told them when to eat, charge or retreat. The bugle gave instruction in the heat of battle. During the Civil War Emerguildo witnessed the battles of Antietam, Richmond and Fredericksbnurg, which Hoptak called “some of the war’s most sanguinary.”
In July 1862, Emerguildo read the news of his own death in Pottsville’s Mining Record newspaper. Worse, the paper referred to him as a “servant.” In response, Emerguildo wrote a letter to a rival newspaper, the Miners’ Journal.
“I was greatly surprised of hearing the statement of my death,” he wrote, “and that I am a servant to Captain White. Both these statements are utterly false. I did not enlist to be a servant, except to the country of my adoption… The gallant Colonel Nagle never brought me to this country to be a slave.”
In fact, it was a horse that had been killed.
On Emerguildo’s service card, the facts are clear. Name: Marqueese, Emri’doa [sic]. Age at enrollment: 23. Height: 5’1”. Hair: dark. Complexion: dark. Eyes: dark. Occupation: house painter, just like his adopted father. There is more to Emerguildo than that.
“I wanted to get to know Emerguildo better, to discover his story and his experiences,” Hoptak said. “What must it have been like to be brought from Mexico City, 2,400 miles to coal country in east-central Pennsylvania and to a new home? What was it that motivated his enlistment into the U.S. Army in 1861? What were his experiences in the conflict, and so on?”
Some of these questions would never be answered. There were still pieces missing. Hoptak still didn’t know why and how Emerguildo became a member of the Nagle family in the first place. Years later, the story of the young Mexican bugler had all but ended. Hoptak was working at the Antietam Battlefield and was approached by John Nagle, the General’s great-great-grandson. Luckily, John said, the Nagles never threw anything away. John presented Hoptak with a letter written by Nagle’s daughter Kate, an account of Emerguildo’s adoption. A trio of barefoot orphan boys followed Nagle and his men through Mexico.
“Dangerous, indeed,” Hoptak said about the boys’ journey.
According to Kate, the boys “learned to love” the soldiers, and the soldiers did the same. Each of the three soldiers adopted a boy, and for reasons now lost to history, Nagle chose Emerguildo. The Nagle family treated Emerguildo like one of their own. He got along with his younger siblings Emma, age 7; George Washington, age 5; and James Winfield, age 1, (it’s strange to imagine a 1-year-old crawling around with a name like James Winfield). They called Emerguildo Marium. When he was already in Pottsville, the Nagles welcomed two more children, Marcus Henry and Frank Lincoln.
Emerguildo and his family together. PHOTO BY JACQUELINE DORMER
“Here was someone,” Hoptak said, “who in the midst of a war thousands of miles away from home took a young, eight-year-old orphaned boy under his charge and raised him as one of his own children. Nagle supported Lincoln and opposed slavery. His adoption of Emerguildo further spoke to his humanitarianism.”
Emerguildo joined his family in joy and grief. George Washington was thrown from a horse and died at the age of 8. Emerguildo went to school and was trained as a jeweler, visiting his family on the weekends whenever he could. Emerguildo died at the Nagle home in 1880. He was in his early 40s. He was buried with his family.
“Unfortunately there was not much to discover outside the government records and the scraps kept by James’ descendants,” Hoptak said. We do not even know Emerguildo’s cause of death.”
A photo exists of Emerguildo and James Winfield in uniform. Emerguildo has big hands and big, expressive eyes that look like they have seen things beyond their owner’s years. He has an alert, almost inquisitive posture. Anything about Emerguildo’s character, his personal life, his experiences as a Civil War veteran and a Mexican-American in Pottsville, must be assumed from this photograph. There is nothing else to go by. Over the years the photograph yellowed, and the grave was swallowed by the ground. When he met John Nagle, Hoptak had no idea that Emerguildo was buried in Pottsville.
“I saw what turned out to be Emerguildo’s stone,” Hoptak said, “laying face-down in the turf, the blank side of the stone facing upwards and grass creeping in on all sides. On a whim I lifted it up and once I was able to make out the name, it was just a thrilling moment for me. Hard to describe, actually, but it felt like the end of the long journey to ‘discover’ Emerguildo.”
Shay and Hoptak look at their work. PHOTO BY JACQUELINE DORMER
Right next to Emerguildo’s grave was a small stone, also part of the Nagle family plot. The only words on it were “Joe” and “Drawn Nearer.” Hoptak was intrigued. A new mystery began.
Whose tombstone is this? a new history mystery for Hoptak to solve. PHOTO BY JACQUELINE DORMER
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