Virginia's Foreign Born Confederates

This publication resulted from the current interest in the "War" and the increasing interest exhibited by people to trace their ancestry. It is the author's sincere desire that this publication will assist those people in their searches.

Many immigrants came to America during a time between their birth and the beginning of the Civil War. Many of these enlisted in Virginia regiments in early 1861. The number who enlisted is amazing because after a year's service, many were discharged due to the fact that they were considered non-residents of the Confederacy. The information in this publication, while scarce in many cases, is based on their service records. A number of these foreign born Confederates were born in Ireland who believed if they stayed in Ireland faced more poverty, disease, starvation and English oppresion. And finally, the Irish diet was mainly potatoes that often grew on poor land. However, in 1845 a potato blight overtook the fields of Ireland and crop failures continued until 1852 causing many Irish to immigrate. It also should be noted that, in some cases, it appears the soldiers names have been anglicized in their service records. Finally, those who use a sound index when searching other records, should search for variants of surnames. A fine example of this is the Zirkle name. It can be found in the records as Cirkle, Zircle, Zirkel, Zercle, Zerkle, Zerkel and Circle.

The records in this publication may be incomplete in some cases. It is not the intention of the author to purposefully omit any man who served in the Confederacy. It, however, is the authors belief that most of the men have been included in this publication.