Emmons Dexter Guild papers (Ms. 78.20)

Biographical note

Emmons Dexter Guild was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts on September 11, 1843. He was the second son of Allen Dexter and Abby Tabor Guild. Guild joined the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry on December 14, 1861. After training at Camp Arnold in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the regiment was sent to Washington, D.C. where it saw action almost exclusively in Virginia as part of the Army of the Potomac.

E. D. Guild was captured by the enemy on the night of October 12, 1863, along with 46 others. Of that number, only three eventually returned home to Rhode Island. The majority of Guild's captivity was spent in Andersonville Prison. He was paroled February 26, 1865 and mustered out of the army April 1, 1865.

Guild married Ella Josephine Brown on June 26, 1870. He was an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans group, and two fraternal organizations, the Improved Order of Red Men and the Oddfellows. He died in 1909.

At some point after the war, Guild wrote up his experiences as a prisoner of war in an undated pamphlet entitled 500 Days in War Prisons, possibly published in Attleboro, Massachusetts. He is also mentioned in Frederic Denison's Sabres and Spurs, a history of his unit commissioned by The First Rhode Island Cavalry Veteran Association and published in 1876.