Four Bullets at Baler Bay: The Story of Arthur Venville: Part 2
Remembering those who fought for our freedoms
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Release Date: November 18, 2025
Wounded, left behind, unaccounted for
A week before Christmas 1899 and 232 days after Arthur Venville and the rest of the USS Yorktown cutter’s crew had been ambushed and captured by Filipino insurgents, word came from Rear Admiral John Crittenden Watson at Manila – two members of the party had miraculously escaped their captors and were back in American hands:
“Manila, Dec 17: Seaman Rynders, of the Yorktown crew, captured at Baler, recaptured with Woodbury by cavalry at Bayombong, and has reported on board the flagship. Both wounded when Gillmore was taken and left behind, he reports Nygard, McDonald, Dillon and Morrissey killed. Rynders, Woodbury, Venville wounded in foot, unable to travel. Doing well. Baler, June 15. Expect Woodbury tomorrow. Wounded not cared for; wounds received personal care. Woodbury and Rynders walked nearly to Manila. WATSON.” 1
For Arthur’s mother, Emily Mash, the news, sparse as it was, confirmed what she knew in her heart: Her son had survived the initial attack. He was alive.
At the Mash house, the Christmas holidays passed with a sense of joy and renewed hope. After eight months of not knowing, of sending out letter after letter only to hear there was no news, they finally had answers. Arthur was wounded but alive. He was being cared for. He was safe. He was alive. There was hope.
Six days into the new century another dispatch was received from Manila, and this one seemed to be the answer to prayers:
Colonels Luther Rector Hare and Robert Lee Howze have just arrived at Viga, Northwest Luzon, with all the American prisoners. Their successful pursuit was a remarkable achievement.
A second statement, this from the Navy Department, followed almost immediately and listed, by name, men “captured and believed to be released” the Yorktown’s cutter.
Lieutenant J. C. Gillmore; William Walton, chief quartermaster, born in Manheim, Germany; John. Ellsworth, coxswain, born in Portsmouth, NH; Lyman Paul Edwards, landsman, born in Peru, IN; Paul Vandoit, sailmaker’s mate, born in France; Silvio Brisolese, landsman, born in San Francisco; Albert Peterson, apprentice, first class, born in Oakland, CA; Fred Anderson, landsman, born in Buffalo, NY. 2
Eight names. Eight men alive and rescued. Eight families able to celebrate a homecoming.
But what of the others? Fifteen men had been aboard the Yorktown’s cutter when it was captured on April 12. What fate had befallen them?
Newspaper accounts across America, including in Portland, answered that question with the following:
By this statement it appears that the following Yorktown men who were wounded were released: William H. Rynders, coxswain, born in Holland; Orrison W. Woodbury, seaman, born in Lynn, MA; Denzell G.A. Venville, apprentice, second class, born in Dudley, ENG, next of kin Mrs. H. D. Mash, Sellwood, OR.
The statement thus makes it appear that the following sailors included in the Urdaneta and Yorktown parties were killed:
Of the Yorktown: John Dillon, landsman, born in in Galway, Ireland; Charles Albert Morrissey, landsman, born in Columbus, NE; Ora B. MacDonald, ordinary seaman, born in Carmel Valley, CA; Edward J. Nygaard, gunner’s mate, third class, born in Warsaw, Russia.
Hidden in plain sight were words of caution, ambiguity, the fog of war: Believed to be correct. Subject to Amendment by Admiral Watson. It appears.
But in the Sellwood, OR, home of Arthur’s anxiously waiting family, those words were all but invisible.
“Oh, I cannot tell you how I feel at getting this glorious news, after having my hopes deferred until my heart had grown faint with the waiting suspense. It can scarcely seem possible that my dear boy is alive and that I shall yet be permitted to see him again, when I had almost given up hope.
I would sit as the days went by and wonder whether my boy was dead or alive, I would open the morning papers with fear and trembling, lest I should find some fatal news about him, yet, I sought all the information I could get hold of to relieve my suspense.” Emily Mash. 3
It was a moment of unguarded joy, reported in the press as fact. Readers across Oregon and the country breathed a sigh of relief at the happy ending — for Mrs. Mash and the other families, but also for themselves.
But the ending wasn't happy, and it wasn’t an ending.
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Just days later, an update arrived from Manila, and it shattered everything the first had promised.
“Gillmore, Walton, Vandoit, Ellsworth, Edwards, Anderson, Peterson, Edwards arrived. Also Farley, Burke and Herbert of the Urdaneta. Only Venville unaccounted for. Last seen at Baler, June 15.” 4
Only Venville.
The Oregonian, which had printed the mother’s joy just days before, now printed her despair. Under the headline “A Cruel Disappointment,” the editors acknowledged the bitter irony:
“This false report of good news was sorry preparation for the truth, which was to fall like a thunderbolt.” ⁵
The paper tried to offer comfort. Perhaps he had joined another band of troops. Perhaps he was detained by insurgents who could not long evade American forces. “Prisoners have not been killed by Aguinaldo’s forces recently, but treated with ostentatious courtesy for political effect. There is the best reason for hoping that the Sellwood mother may yet welcome her boy, as back from the dead, and certainly such love and devotion deserve such recompense.” ⁵
But hope was no longer a gift. It had become a torment.
In the months that followed, letters began to arrive – letters from the men who had been captured with Arthur, men who had survived and come home. They wrote to tell Arthur’s mother what they’d seen, what they remembered, what they believed.
Lyman Paul Edwards of Peru, Indiana, wrote a long account of the ambush and the brutal march that followed. He described the first volley, the men killed instantly, the wounded left on the riverbank.
“I certainly thought my time had come, as they made us kneel down in a row to be shot, but just then a Spanish officer who was with the Filipinos came along and prevented the act. The rebels were allowed to take everything we had, with the exception of our trousers. We were then taken before the president of the town, leaving two of our dead and two more, Nygard and MacDonald, mortally wounded, on the river bank. Venville, Rynders and Woodbury were wounded, but were able to get along with us. These three men were left at Baler after we were taken away. Venville is still a prisoner, but the other two were rescued by the troops some time later. 5
Lyman had been among those marched to San Isidro, then to Vigan, then into the mountains. He had escaped in December and been rescued by American troops. But he had not seen Arthur since Baler. “Venville is still a prisoner,” he wrote, though by the time his letter was published in March 1900, even that was uncertain.
William Walton, the chief quartermaster, wrote his own account for the papers. His narrative was vivid and harrowing – the ambush, the screaming wounded, the long forced marches barefoot over stones, the jails, the hunger, the fear of execution. He spoke of the moment they had to leave Arthur behind:
“Leaving the wounded at Baler, the seven sound men and Lieutenant Gillmore set off for San Isidro, under a guard of fifteen men.” 6
He mentioned the other wounded – MacDonald, who had died on the riverbank; Nygard, who never recovered consciousness. But of Arthur he said only that he had been “badly wounded” and left at Baler in the care of the Spanish officer and the townspeople.
In March, Lieutenant Gillmore’s own official report was published. It was a careful, detailed recounting of the disaster – the orders he had followed, the ambush he could not have anticipated, the men who had fought and died. Of Arthur he wrote with particular admiration:
“Venville, apprentice, first class, for his bravery and coolness under fire, endeavoring to get a clip out of a Lee rifle for me, and, although wounded seriously four times, still persisting. He is a young man of exemplary habits, only seventeen or eighteen years of age, and showed remarkable coolness and bravery.” 7
Wounded seriously four times. Eighteen years old. Left behind.
Emily memorized the words and refolded the clippings into the same drawer where she kept Arthur’s last letter. She had not given up. She could not.
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In June 1900, new information surfaced from an unexpected quarter. Captain Willard D. Newbill of the Thirty-Fourth Infantry, stationed at Baler, had been tasked with finding Arthur Venville. He wrote that in late May, American forces had captured and liberated two Spanish friars – Franciscans named Juan Lopez and Feliz Minaya – who had been held by the insurgents since the Siege of Baler.
The friars had known Arthur. They’d been fellow captives.
Captain Newbill’s letter, published in The San Francisco Chronicle on July 22, was careful and precise:
“These men had been with the besieged Spaniards in the church at Baler, and after the surrender of the Spaniards were kept at Baler with young Venville, who was too badly wounded to be sent with Gillmore and his party to San Isidore.”
The friars reported that Arthur had remained at Baler for nearly a year, treated kindly by local women, but compelled to act as a servant. When General Frederick Funston’s expedition approached Baler in February 1900, the insurgents had moved the friars and Arthur inland to San Jose. But on May 19, 1900, the friars awoke from a siesta to find Arthur gone.
They’d asked where he’d been taken. The Filipinos replied only that “he was being looked after.”
Captain Newbill’s assessment was blunt: “The friars believe he has been killed. I fear what they say is true, as Venville must have known much damaging evidence against the insurrectos.”
The letter noted that Captain Teodorico Novicio, the local rebel leader, and others were again under arrest and under examination “as to their disposition of Venville.”
It was now, he wrote, an investigation, not a rescue. 8
In August, Emily received two letters that she would keep until the end of her life.
The first was from Lieutenant James C. Gillmore himself, written from Washington on June 6, 1900:
“My Dear Mrs. Mash – Your letter of March 10 has just been received. Your son was with me in the boat and acted with the greatest coolness and bravery, for which I highly commended him to the Navy Department. When we who could travel were marched to the insurgent capital (San Isidro), the three men seriously wounded, including your son, had to be left behind. When I last saw him he was doing well and I thought would be all right in a short time.”
Arthur’s commanding officer went on to explain that the two men left wounded with Arthur – Rynder and Woodbury – had said that when they recovered, they were marched into the interior. Arthur, though recovered, “was not able to stand the rough march, and so had to be left behind.”
“I went to our Admiral and told him the facts. He said that everything had been done to discover the whereabouts of Venville, but nothing could be found out. He must have been taken to the interior and there found other American prisoners. I hope and trust that he will come out all right, for there was no braver man in the boat with me.” 9
The second letter was from Rear Admiral J. C. Watson. It was shorter, more formal, and offered no hope at all – only the vague consolation of faith:
“I hope you know where to turn in such trouble and have already experienced the comfort of basking in the infinite love of our Savior. With much sympathy, I am, J. C. Watson, Rear Admiral, U.S.N.” 10
Arthur’s mother set both letters aside and returned to the window where she had kept her lamp burning for more than a year. The wick had long since burned down. But she didn’t move the lamp, and she didn’t stop looking toward the street, as if at any moment a telegram might come, or a neighbor might call out, or a young man in a sailor’s uniform might turn the corner and walk up the path to her door.
She’d been told her son was wounded. She’d been told he was doing well. She’d been told he was alive in May and then June. She’d been told he was gone.
She’d been told he was brave.
She would not be told to stop waiting.
Copyright 2025 Lori Olson White
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End Notes
1 “News of Yorktown Men,” Crawford Bulletin, Crawford, NE, December 30, 1899, P. 2.
2 “All Are Now Free: American Prisoners Rescued from Filipinos. Successful End of Pursuit. Remaining Members of Yorktown Party Believed to be at Vigan, Campaign in Cavite,” The Oregonian, Portland, OR, January 6, 1900, P. 1.
3 “Mrs. H. D. Mash Notified,” The Oregonian, Portland, OR, January 6, 1900, P. 1.
4 “A Cruel Disappointment,” The Oregonian, Portland, OR, January 9, 1900, P. 4.
5 “Adventures of an Indiana Boy,” The Sioux City Journal, Sioux City, IA, March 25, 1900, 11.
6 “Agony in Luzon Jails: Cruel Treatment Accorded American Prisoners by Filipinos,” The Inter Ocean, Chicago, IL, April 1, 1900, 40.
7 “Lieut. Gillmore’s Report,” The New York Times, New York, NY, March 31, 1900.
8 “Later News of Young Venville: He was Alive at Baler as Late as Last May, Only Member of the Gillmore’s Party Yet to be Accounted for. Two Spanish Friars, rescued by Americans, Had been Fellow Captives of the Californian,” The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, CA, July 22, 1900, P. 10.
9 “Later News of Young Venville,” The San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, CA, July 22, 1900, 10.
10 “Brave Arthur Venville: His Mother Receives a Letter from Gilmore. There is a Possibility that the Sellwood Lad is Still Alive in the interior of Luzon,” The Sunday Oregonian, Portand, OR, August 12, 1900. P. 9.
The impending sense of doom mounts into the relentess anguish of a waiting mother's heart.
Oh wow Lori the hope turns to despair in an instant, I am totally on tenterhooks myself, how must his poor mother have felt during all of this? It's the not knowing thats the hardest part!