Villa Americana, Brazil in São Paulo state
The term Confederado in Brazilian Portuguese refers
to Confederate refugees who established colonies in the South American country.
As the last American nation to abolish slavery Brazil attracted defeated
Southerners who hoped to build a Confederate replica, growing cotton worked by
enslaved people. Alabama politician William Hutchinson Norris arrived in 1866
with his family and bought acreage for cotton.
Dom Pedro (1825-1891), Brazil's monarch since he was five, was a strong supporter of the Confederacy and a benefactor to defeated Southerners who sought new homes, selling them land cheap and offering free transportation. Brazil with a government more stable than Mexico’s became a destination for a few thousand Confederados, many of who lived out their lives there and left Brazilian children and great-grandchildren.
"Many persons who, from long habit and fondly cherished theories, have become strongly attached to the institution of African slavery, fancy that in Brazil they will find an opportunity for the permanent use of that system of labor — Brazil and the Spanish possessions being the only two slaveholding communities remaining in the civilized world." New Orleans Daily Picayune, September, 1865
Casa de Norris
Mary Black and William Norris had 10 or 11 children. How many accompanied them from Alabama to Brazil to live in this house? Seven are buried in Brazil; three boys in the U.S.
1850 Census Alabama, Before the War
Isabella P. Norris was the oldest girl, in her mid-20s when they sailed for South America. She soon married another Confederado Joseph E. Whitaker, formerly of the Mississippi Infantry.
Lt. Joseph Elisha Whitaker (1836-1918) & Isabella P. Norris Whitaker (1841-1897)
Few of the transplanted Southerners actually owned slaves but William Norris made those archaic and cruel economics a point of pride.
Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, over two decades after the
U.S. Emancipation Proclamation.
Twentieth-century Norris family members in Brazil
Steagall family members who married into the Norris family
The Chicago Tribune’s Nancy Cabot quilt column published the pattern in the 1930s.
Read More:
For more information about the colony of Americana, Brazil, see the Auburn University Libraries, which has a Confederados Digital Collection:
https://content.lib.auburn.edu/digital/collection/confederado/search
Gaston, James McFadden, Hunting a home in Brazil: The agricultural resources and other characteristics of the country. Also, the manners and customs of the inhabitants (1867).
William Clark Griggs, The Elusive Eden: Frank McMullan's Confederate Colony in Brazil, Austin: University of Texas, 1987. (The failed Iguape Colony)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101273703/isabella-whitaker
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