Following the Civil War, many southern families - maybe as many as 20,000 migrated to Brazil.
Under fluttering Confederate flags, women in hoop skirts dance the Virginia reel with men wearing rebel gray. It could have been a gathering of Civil War buffs in Georgia or Alabama, but this picnic took place more than 4000 miles below the Mason-Dixon line. Brazilian descendants of Confederate veterans who sought refuge in this tropical nation 130 years ago gather four times a year to celebrate their American roots. They are members of the Fraternidade Descendencia Americana, founded in 1954 to preserve ties to U.S. culture among an estimated 100,000 heirs of the original emigrants. The Confederate emigres were some 20,000 Southerners who preferred the Brazilian wilderness to life under Yankee rule after the Civil War. The expatriates were called Confederados and their community was Vila Americana, or 'American Town." Today, Vila Americana (pop. 200,000) is the only city in Brazil with a coat of arms that has a Confederate flag as its centerpiece.
Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1653 - Os Confederados - was reorganized in 2012.
The Edgefield Colonization Society
Families to Brazil
Our research on the families who migrated to Brazil
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John C. Rigdon | |||||
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