Death of John Riley,
Organizer Of the San Patricio Batallion

Death of John Riley,
Organizer Of the San Patricio Batallion
By Robert R. Miller, Ph.D.

(Used with permission from SOMOS PRIMOS, newsletter of the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research (SHHAR), Feb. 2000 issue (http://www.somosprimos.com/spfeb.htm).

Biographical data about John Riley, the Irishman who organized the San Patricio Battalion of the Mexican Army during the U.S.-Mexican War, is scanty, but some new information about the end of his life has just come to light. It has long been known that John Riley was born in County Galway (Ireland). He served in the British Army, and then subsequently as a private soldier in the U.S. Army, before defecting to the Mexican Army on the Rio Grande (Río Bravo) in mid-April of 1846. Mexican Army records show that he was commissioned as a lieutenant and list him as "Juan Riley."

Riley and other deserters, many of whom were Irish-born, formed the San Patricio companies and fought in the battles of Matamoros, Monterey, Buena Vista (Angostura), Cerro Gordo, and Churubusco. At their last battle, on August 20, 1847, he and seventy-one other San Patricios were captured by American troops and were subsequently court-martialed.

Although 50 of the men were hanged for desertion, Riley and about 15 of his companions escaped this punishment because they had deserted before the U.S. Congress declared war. Instead, they were hot-iron branded on the cheek with a "D" for deserter, suffered 50 lashes on the bare back, and were imprisoned in Mexico City for the duration of the war.

When the war ended in June of 1848, Riley rejoined the Mexican Army with the permanent rank of major (comandante) and the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel. He served, mostly at Puebla de los Angeles, until his discharge for medical reasons in the summer of 1850. At that time, he received his back pay of $800.

Speculation about the rest of his life has made for colorful stories. A Yankee soldier named Sam Chamberlain wrote in his book, My Confession, that Riley married a wealthy Mexican Señora and lived in his adopted country, respected by the Mexicans. Michael Hogan, in The Irish Soldiers of Mexico, thought this was likely to be true and added the phrase, "they raised a large family". An article in Smithsonian Magazine averred that Riley "was asked to leave the country," and an article in The Americas stated that he was expelled from Mexico in the postwar era.

The most imaginative and false story was concocted by a veteran of the war, Jacob Oswandel, who in his book, Notes of the Mexican War, claimed that Riley returned to the United States and sued the federal government for $50,000 in damages for flogging and branding him in Mexico.

What really happened to Riley was quite different. After his discharge in mid-summer of 1850, he journeyed to Veracruz, presumably to catch a ship that would take him toward Ireland, but instead, he died in the port city. The recently-discovered death record states, in translation: "In the Heroic City of Veracruz, on August 31, 1850, I, Don Ignacio Jose Jimenez, curate of the parish church of the Assumption of Our Lady, buried in the general cemetery the body of Juan Riley, 45 years old, a native of Ireland, unmarried, parents unknown. He died as a consequence of drunkenness, without the sacrament [of last rites]."

Poor John Riley-he did not marry a wealthy Mexican lady, nor was he able to return to his homeland in Erin where he had a son. Who knows what happened to the commemorative battle medals awarded him by the Mexican government, or to his passport, army discharge, and other mementos of his four years and four and a half months in Mexico?

Robert Ryal Miller, Historian
426 Orilla del Mar, Santa Barbara, CA 93103
(805) 962-9904
Dr. Miller is the author of Shamrock and Sword, the Saint Patrick's Battalion in the U.S.-Mexican War, University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.
Article originally released in Mexico City, The News, p. 20, 11 April 1999. Permission to reprint granted to SHHAR by the author.
Submitted by Carmen Boone de Aguilar

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