By A. J. Schenkman

2nd. Lt. Augusto Rodriguez, portrait in Sheldon B. Thorpe, The History of the Fifteenth Connecticut Volunteers in the War for the Defense of the Union, 1861–1865, Price, Lee, and Adkins, 1893.

Evergreen Cemetery was established nearly 180 years ago in New Haven, Connecticut. Like other cemeteries from its era, it boasts parklike surroundings. Many notable individuals are interred across its 85 acres, including former governors of Connecticut and even the son of Leo Tolstoy. Until August 13, 2019, it also served as the resting place for Second Lieutenant Augusto Rodriguez of the 15th Connecticut Infantry Regiment, recognized as the first Puerto Rican U.S. military veteran.

Although he lived in New Haven when he volunteered for the Union army—the 1860 federal census listed his address on Columbus Avenue—Rodriguez spent part of his life in North Haven, an agricultural community for much of its early history. According to the North Haven Historical Society, during the Industrial Revolution, citizens from Puerto Rico journeyed to North Haven, hoping to take advantage of the lucrative trade between New England and the island. Some immigrants prospered from the trade, while others, like Rodriguez, worked as merchants.

According to his military service records compiled in the National Archives in Washington, DC, Rodriguez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1841. At that time, Puerto Rico was still part of the Spanish Empire and remained so until 1898, when Spain ceded the island to the United States following the Spanish–American War. As a result, Rodriguez’s birthplace is sometimes recorded as Spain. Census data indicates that by 1860, 10 families from Puerto Rico, including Rodriguez’s, lived in the North Haven area.

Rodriguez’s enlistment papers show that he was five feet, five inches tall, with a fair complexion, hazel eyes, and brown hair. He volunteered on April 22, 1861, and mustered into service on May 7. Initially, he was assigned to Company G of the 2nd Connecticut Infantry Regiment as a private. After serving three months, he mustered out with the rest of his unit on August 7, 1861.

After Union losses at the Seven Days’ Battles in Virginia in June 1862, President Lincoln called on the Northern states to provide 300,000 volunteers for three-year enlistments. In his proclamation, Lincoln stated, “I suggest and recommend that the troops should be chiefly of infantry.” He hoped that increasing the number of troops would “bring this unnecessary and injurious war to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion.” A few days later, a recruiting station opened in New Haven, and on July 14, 1862, a public call for volunteers was issued. Rodriguez signed up for three years with Company I of the 15th Connecticut. His rank was first sergeant.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Rodriguez would have been aware of the horrors of enslavement. Slavery remained legal in Puerto Rico until the Spanish National Assembly abolished it on March 22, 1873. By the mid-19th century, as sugar and coffee plantations expanded, an abolition movement emerged, according to Jay Kinsbruner in Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 1996). His family may have held an antislavery stance like many of their compatriots. Rodriguez may also have needed the sign-on bonus that accompanied enlistment.

On July 18, 1862, the regiment was set to meet at Oyster Point in New Haven, named for the booming oyster industry on Long Island Sound. Known as “The Lyon Regiment,” the 15th honored Connecticut General Nathaniel Lyon, who fell in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in August 1861, making him the first Union general to die in the Civil War. Dexter R. Wright from Meriden, Connecticut, became the colonel of the 15th. By August 6, 1862, all the companies, A through K, had assembled. A week before marching south, Rodriguez married Miss Eliza Hickox in New Haven on August 20.

The 15th left New Haven on August 28, 1862. Local newspapers reported a stormy morning, but the sun shone when they boarded the train. Heading to New York City, the 15th arrived early in the evening and disembarked at 42nd Street. From there, the regiment marched “down 4th Avenue and Broadway to the Battery.” Sergeant Sheldon B. Thorpe of Company K noted that despite a heavy thunderstorm, Sergeant Rodriguez and his fellow soldiers sang with gusto, “Glory, Hallelujah.” Once at the Battery, the regiment departed for South Amboy, New Jersey, then took a train to Camden, New Jersey (The History of the Fifteenth Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Defense of the Union, 1861–1865 (Price, Lee, and Adkins, 1893)). By early Friday morning on August 29, everyone had arrived in Philadelphia. Their journey concluded in Washington, DC, on August 30, where they remained as part of the defense of Washington until September 17.

During the war, the 15th took part in two major battles: Fredericksburg and Wyse Fork. By the time he arrived at Fredericksburg, between December 12 and 15, 1862, Rodriguez had attained the rank of lieutenant. He did not recall this time with any fondness. In his pension application, written nearly a decade later, Rodriguez mentioned that the exposure from a winter march “induced an attack of inflammatory rheumatism.” Despite enduring significant pain, his military service record showed no absences from duty. He later asserted that fellow soldiers sometimes took turns caring for him.

Alfred R. Waud, Fredericksburg, Va., 1862, drawing on brown paper. image: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Fredericksburg represented a significant defeat for Major General Ambrose Burnside of the Union army. Reluctant to accept failure, Burnside made another effort to overcome the Army of Northern Virginia, aiming to catch them off guard. Yet again, disaster struck. Rodriguez and the 15th participated in what became known as the “Mud March,” an unsuccessful assault on January 20, 1863, during which the frozen ground thawed because of warmer temperatures. Deep, thick mud obstructed the Union’s progress as heavy rain set in.

On April 13, 1864, Rodriguez was promoted to second lieutenant. The next battle faced by the 15th was the Battle of Wyse Fork (March 8–10, 1865), described by historian Daniel W. Barefoot as “a fierce engagement” between Union and Confederate forces near Kinston, North Carolina (Encyclopedia of North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)). On the first day of the battle, Rodriguez and most of the 15th Connecticut were surrounded and forced to surrender. He was imprisoned at Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. Records of prisoners of war indicate that he was sent to a parole camp in Maryland on March 26, 1865. Finally, on April 30, 1865, he was formally exchanged and returned to his regiment.

Rodriguez mustered out of the 15th on July 12, 1865, in New Haven and returned to his prewar job as a grocer’s clerk. The 1866–1867 Benham’s New Haven Directory listed him working at 247 State Street and living at 142 George Street with his wife, Eliza, and their daughter. Throughout the 1860s, he remained a clerk while moving to different residences. By 1870, he was still listed as a grocery clerk.

In 1871 and 1872, he vanished from business directories, likely due to worsening bouts of rheumatism. He applied for a military pension in 1873, with a surgeon noting that he could no longer work. His condition deteriorated further, leading to heart disease. By 1874, he found work in a cigar store and later as a bartender. In 1879, a doctor described him as physically weakened and “broken down in constitution.” Although he was listed as a saloon keeper that year, he was completely disabled. That would be the last full year of his life.

Rodriguez passed away on March 22, 1880. The New Haven death register recorded his cause of death as valvular heart disease. It also noted that he was divorced, though there are no records of a divorce between him and Eliza. His obituary in The New Haven Evening Register reported that his “friends ministered to his wants” during his “long and painful illness.” It also explained that, since he served as a firefighter in Mutual Hook and Ladder No. 1, he would be buried in the “firemen’s lot” at Evergreen Cemetery (“A Veteran Soldier,” March 23, 1880). His stone in the firefighter’s pantheon simply read “Rodirique.” On August 14, 2019, Rodriguez’s remains were exhumed from Evergreen Cemetery, flown to Puerto Rico, and reinterred later that week at Puerto Rico National Cemetery in Bayamon with full military honors (Christopher Peak, “Bones Unearth City’s Puerto Rican History,” The New Haven Independent, August 14, 2019).

Augusto Rodriguez was the earliest known Puerto Rican veteran to serve in the American military, but he wasn’t the only Latino to fight in the Civil War. The National Park Service estimates that around 20,000 soldiers of Spanish and Latin American descent enlisted in both the Union and Confederate armies. In many cases, their contributions have been overlooked by historians and are only now being rediscovered.

A.J. Schenkman is an award-winning author, a former municipal historian, and a history teacher in the Hudson Valley. His latest publication is a children’s book about Franklin Roosevelt. He currently writes for Dutchess Magazine, Litchfield Magazine, and Shawangunk Journal…

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