By CAROLYN CARY
ccary@thecitizennews.com

The annual visit of the Confederado kids always takes place in July.

That's because they live in the state of Saž Paulo in Brazil and it's winter there. Last week the temperature got down to zero, so you understand why schools are always closed in July.

Three “Confederados” stayed three weeks with various families in Georgia and were taken to all the historic Civil War sites in the state.

“Confederado” is the term applied to those Confederate soldiers who traveled to Brazil in the mid to late 1860s.

The emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, sent word after the War Between The States that he would sell them land at $22 an acre if they would teach his farmers how to do things better. He did and they did — they had taken with them a different kind of plow, which worked well in Brazilian soil.

The emperor also asked them to show the farmers how to grow cotton, as he had personally seen the world go without this commodity for five years.

Brazil now leads the world in the production of cotton.

Roughly as many as 10,000 veterans made the arduous trip (it still takes 10 hours in a plane) and the majority of them stayed.

The direct descendants of these people are fully aware of who their ancestors were, the state they were from, the companies they fought under and the battles they participated in.

Each Confederate Memorial Day near the end of April, more than 1,000 get together in Americana and Brazil, and celebrate their American history.

This year three descendants came: Ive Souta M M. Lima, 19, of Campinas, Saž Paulo; Bianca Caroline Cicotoste, 17, of Iracemapolis, Saž Paulo, and Thales Ferguson, 16, of Rio Claro, Saž Paulo, visited for three weeks.

They were hosted, in part, by the Sharpsburg Sharpshooters Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 1729. At a ceremony on their last day, they were given a Confederate flag that had flown in the Confederate Veteran section of Oak Hill Cemetery, Newnan, to take back to their SCV camp in Brazil.

Lima's ancestor is descended from Ezekiel F. Pyles, South Carolina; Cicotoste is descended from Calvin McKnight, Texas, and Ferguson is descended from Green Ferguson, Kentucky.

They would like to go into dentistry, the travel industry and the medical field, respectively.

The Confederados returned with a much better understanding of their heritage.