Formed by adults and teenagers from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's small towns and cities, the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was composed primarily of men of German heritage. Many of their family and friends still spoke German or its "Pennsylvania Dutch" variant in their homes and churches more than a hundred years after their forebears emigrated from Germany in search of religious or political freedom. Other members of this regiment traced their roots to Ireland; at least two had emigrated from Cuba; several were field hands or house slaves who had been liberated from plantations or other Confederate-held areas of the Deep South.