Joseph Long Minchin at the age of twenty joined the Confederate Army (July of 1861) and served as an Orderly Sergeant with Company “I” of the 4th Florida Infantry. He was a prison guard at Andersonville, Georgia. He had fought at the battles of Chickamauga and Atlanta.  He surrendered at Macon, Georgia, in April of 1865. 

A year later on March 15, 1866, he married Julia Pyles and they moved to Brazil on the 24 of June of 1867 where he worked as a coffee plantation foreman saving enough to eventually buy his own farm of 900 acres. In 1921 he was living in Nova Odessa, Brazil, with other Confederados.

[The following comes from Joseph Long Minchin, a resident of Nova Odessa, Brazil, South America, one of the Confederate (Confederados) soldiers who went to Brazil soon after the war and founded an American colony there. Doubtless he would be glad to hear from any of his surviving comrades in this country. His daughter is Mrs. T. W. Boone, of Spring Creek, Tex] 

“I was born on January 16, 1841, near Thomasville, Georgia. My father was a Baptist preacher and moved to West Florida when I was quite young. I attended the "old field" schools and worked on the farm until the War Between the States broke out. 

Going out as a volunteer, I served the first year on the Florida coast, St. Vincent's Island, and Fernandina.  From there we were ordered to Tennessee in the 4th Florida Regiment, Finley's Brigade, Breckinridge's Division, Hardee's Corps, Army of Tennessee. I was in the three days’ bloody work at Chickamauga, New Hope Church, Jackson, Mississippi, on advanced line around Chattanooga, where only five of the company I was in escaped, and I was in many other engagements. For a short time, I served as orderly sergeant of a company to guard the prisoners at Andersonville, where I daily saw Major Wirz. who was unjustly executed after the war. I was in Macon, Georgia, catching up deserters in the lower part of the State, a dangerous business. Then the end was near. Lee had surrendered, and Macon had to follow suit.  I was captured and paroled, and I am still a paroled prisoner, as I have never been exchanged.   

On March 15, 1866, I was married to Miss Julia Antionette Pyles, who was born near Macon in 1849. Conditions in the South were so desolate and disagreeable that the 24th day of June, 1867, found us landing in Xiririca, Brazil, S. A. After seven years I returned to the States to see my mother. 

After my return to South America I planned to take my family back home, but disasters, one after another, kept me from going.   For fifteen or twenty years I was employed on Fazendas de Cafe (coffee plantation) as overseer or foreman (administrator). We reared a family of eight children, four boys and four girls. All of the children live in Brazil except one daughter in Texas. 

My beloved companion has passed on years ago, and now I am old and feeble. My farm of nine hundred acres is about fifteen minutes' drive to a station.  From a window in my bedroom I can see trains coming and going day and night. We make a good living raising hogs, corn, rice, watermelons, potatoes, mandioca, etc.   I should like to visit my native land, but am too old and feeble and do not think I could stand the climate there now.”