I am pleased to share with you my impending trip to Brazil next week and the reason for my going.

After The War Between The States, the emperor of Brazil invited Confederate families to come to Brazil and teach the country's farmers Southern farming techniques, including how to grow cotton.

The Southerners were given free land and as many as 8,000 went, most of whom stayed.

As they began to die, a burial place was needed, as the country was Catholic and they were not permitted to be buried in Catholic cemeteries.

A two-acre site was selected and the name "Campo" given to it. The community around this site eventually became known as "Americana." It is located 90 miles from the City of São Paulo, which is located in the State of São Paulo.

The direct descendants of these Confederates now speak Portuguese but are well aware of their ancestry. They can tell you who their ancestor was, the state he was from and the battles he fought in.

They have a reunion at Campo each year and the festival is held in the same way that Southerners used to hold festivals, in the middle of the cemetery.

Consequently, on Confederate Memorial Day, I shall be in Americana, Brazil, in the middle of a Confederate cemetery, eating fried chicken and singing "Dixie." Not bad, for a Yankee girl!

Last summer five teenagers from Brazil spent a month in Georgia, visiting Confederate sites and the battlefields at which their ancestors fought. There were four boys and one girl, and I shall be staying with her family, the Daniel Carr deMuzio family.