“Bold and Brave as a Lion”: Ireland's Michael Emmet Urell

Carte de visite by Thos. Heney of New York City. On September 20, 1869, baseball fans streamed past the White House onto the National Grounds to watch two hometown teams go head to head. The Alerts took the field sporting dark gray shirts, black pants, and caps. The Olympics, wearing blue-striped white caps and white shirts and pants with blue stockings, came out swinging in the top of the first inning with eight runs and went on to dominate the contest with a commanding 56–4 victory.

 

One of the Olympics’ stars, pictured here, Michael Emmet Urell, batted sixth and played first base. At 24, the athletic young man might well have been considered lucky to be alive, having survived a grievous wound in the recent Civil War.

 

His American story began in 1855, when he arrived from the village of Nenagh in County Tipperary, Ireland. Finding a home among New York City’s large Irish population and getting an education in public schools, the war interrupted his peacetime pursuits.

 

Days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Urell left his job as a mercantile clerk and enlisted as a sergeant in Company E of the 2nd New York State Militia, which entered federal service as the 82nd New York Infantry. He and his fellow volunteers faced the enemy at First Bull Run and suffered 60 casualties. Though Urell escaped injury on the fields of Manassas, he had a tougher time the following year during the Peninsula Campaign. He received a slight wound at the Battle of Fair Oaks on the last day of May. In July, he collapsed from sunstroke at the Battle of Malvern Hill, fell into enemy hands, and spent a month in prison.

 

Heavy losses seemed to follow the 82nd in almost every battle in which it fought—Antietam. Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville. Gettysburg. Along the way, Urell proved his mettle in combat.

 

A few months after Gettysburg, the 82nd marched into action at the Battle of Bristoe Station, pitting the 8,400-man Union 2nd Corps led by Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren against Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill’s much larger 3rd Corps. An admirer noted that Sgt. Urell, carrying the regiment’s colors, “seems to have forcefully collided with the whole Confederate Army.”

 

Years after the war, Urell told his story.

 

“My regiment, the Eighty-second New York, was in the rear division, second of the Second Corps. We had left our cavalry behind, at Catlett’s Station, and drawn in our flankers, as we had no idea that the enemy were near. All at once and completely to our surprise the Confederates came yelling out of the woods and under the bridge across Broad Run, upon our left flank. Facing about, we received their onslaught. I was color-bearer at the time, and was in the fight but a few moments when I was shot in the right arm and through the body. The colors were knocked out of my hands and I fell, but immediately rose, picked up the flag, and again faced the rebel lines, rallying my comrades. Soon after I fell again from loss of blood, and was left for dead as the regiment fell back. Next morning I found myself under a blanket with a dead comrade. I was picked up by some cavalry, and soon placed in a hospital at Alexandria, Va.”

 

This wartime portrait of Urell holding the colors and wearing his 2nd Corps badge speaks to his courage at Bristoe Station.

 

Urell joined the list of about 540 Union casualties in the victory for Warren and his forces.

 

The shot through Urell's body, a musket ball, passed through his right lung. He spent the next six months in recovery. He rejoined the 82nd wearing the shoulder straps of a second lieutenant and in time for the Overland Campaign. But the rigors of active army life proved too much for his constitution. During the Battle of The Wilderness, his wound, not entirely healed, reopened and resulted in some sort of paralysis—and an honorable discharge.

 

Other honors for his military service followed in 1865: brevet ranks of captain and major of United States Volunteers for gallant and meritorious services in the battles of Fair Oaks, Bristoe Station, and The Wilderness. In 1870, he added another laurel: the Medal of Honor for gallantry at Bristoe Station.

 

In 1875, Urell lost the medal while on a nighttime train excursion from Washington, D.C., to Richmond. He took out newspaper ads offering a reward for its safe return, but there is no record of it having been found.

 

By this time, Urell had made a home in the nation’s capital and received an appointment as a clerk in the War Department. He became an active and popular figure about town, associating with various Irish-American societies in the area.

 

His baseball playing days in the 1860s were fondly recalled by one writer, who noted in the early 20th century: “He was one of the leaders of the game in the old historic White lot, Washington, when the Nationals of that city were regarded as one of the strongest teams in the country. Urell played second base on the old Union team of 1867, acting as captain. Later he joined the Nationals. He was afterward a member of the Olympics of Washington, of which Nick Young was the head. In those days Mike Urell, with his flowing whiskers, facing Colonel Jones, the pitcher of the Nationals, who also wore a full beard, presented a picture that attracted attention. Urell continued his interest in the game throughout his entire life and always argued that the game was just as good and strong in the old days when first bounce was out as it is at present.”

 

The writer’s reference to Nick Young is more than a fellow baseball enthusiast: Nicholas Ephraim Young Jr. (1840–1916) served in the 32nd and 121st New York infantries during the Civil War and went on to become an executive, including president of the National League from 1885–1902.

 

The writer did not mention the lopsided contest in 1869 between the Alerts and the Olympics. This game was notable as an example of interracial play. The Alerts, all Black, and the all-White Olympics played before a mixed-race crowd. While integrated games did occur in some cities where clubs crossed the color barrier during the postwar and early Reconstruction period, the Black teams were not allowed to compete in championship tournaments and leagues. As time went on, segregation intensified, giving rise to a hard line in 1887 that endured for 60 years—until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

 

In addition to his sports interests, social engagements, and job, Urell served two terms in the District of Columbia Legislature as a Republican. Active in the Grand Army of the Republic as a member of the John A. Rawlins Post, No. 1, he served a stint as Commander of the Department of the Potomac in 1890. He was also a family man, marrying Isabelle Helen Brown, an Englishwoman. Together they raised a son, Patrick, and a daughter, Catherine. Isabelle passed away in 1892, leaving Urell a widower. He did not remarry.

 

Urell also continued his military service as an officer in the National Guard and fought as a colonel of volunteers in the Spanish-American War. He participated in the Siege of Santiago, a two-week operation in June 1898 that effectively ended major fighting on the island of Cuba.

 

Though Urell survived the war, the second in his lifetime, without being wounded, he did suffer from fever that had lingering effects. As years passed, his health became more precarious due to the sickness and exacerbated by his Civil War injuries. A physician suggested a common remedy for ailing patients—a sea voyage. Urell decided to visit his native Nenagh in County Tipperary. Before departing, he left a letter with one of his army friends, Capt. Emil G. Schafer, with instructions to open it in the event of his death while in Ireland.

 

On September 6, 1910, he breathed his last in County Cork, en route to Nenagh. Captain Schafer opened the letter, which read, in part: “If I go and should not return, and what’s left of me is sent back home, I desire to impose upon you the task of seeing that your old commander is placed beside his wife in Arlington Cemetery.” Urell added, “Captain, my dear, good friend, I have never knowingly injured man, woman or child, never wronged anybody intentionally. I may have made enemies by standing by my friends. I have for more than forty years been working in the interests of my people—comrades of the civil war and the war with Spain, and friends; also the friends of friends, and I am satisfied I have done a great deal of good work for humanity. Now I will close this memo hoping that you will never read it.”

 

Meanwhile, the body had been transported to Nenagh and a controversy about the burial erupted. According to Urell’s brother, the late colonel had expressed a desire to be buried in Nenagh. A meeting with Capt. Schafer ended with a decision to bring the remains back to America in fulfillment of his final request. Urell’s remains rest alongside his beloved wife in Arlington National Cemetery.

 

44 years later, in 1954, Spanish-American War veterans who campaigned with Urell gathered to commemorate his military service. The veterans had initially planned the event believing it would have been Urell’s 100th birthday, but discovered they were a dozen years late. Still, about 100 guests held the party for him in the backyard of Arlington resident Robert W. Livingston, senior vice commander of the Urell post of the United Spanish War Veteran’s Camp. “We are here to pay a tribute of respect to the typical American soldier,” Livingston noted, adding, “As bold and brave as a lion; as gentle and affectionate in friendship and love as a maiden; who never deserted a friend, who loved the girls and comforted the widows; witty, brimful of fun and mischief, charitable and generous to a fault, and honest in defense of his country and his God—Maj. Michael Emmet Urell!”

 

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