Medical Career and Family
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Wirz attended the University of Zurich but there is no evidence he obtained a degree. Wirz practiced medicine for a time before he emigrated to the U.S. in 1849, when many Forty-Eighters were fleeing the Swiss Sonderbund war and the failed Revolutions of 1848 in the German states and elsewhere. Wirz, who had married in 1845 and had two children, was imprisoned briefly in the late 1840s for unknown reasons.
He established a medical practice in Kentucky, where he married a Methodist widow named Wolfe. Along with her two daughters, they moved to Louisiana. In 1855 his wife gave birth to their daughter, Cora. By 1861, Wirz had a successful medical practice.
Read more about this topic: Henry Wirz
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