There were alot of Birmingham/Southside recruits -- all of my relatives were from the slopes and they served in companies G and H. Companies A and K had recruits from Philadelphia because Schimmelfennig had originally resided there when he first came to the United States and that's where he left Adolf von Hartung and Alexander von Mitzel to find recruits. Von Hartung and von Mitzel were both former Prussian officers who resided in Baltimore and who were connected -- I suspect -- with the Baltimore Turnvereine chapter which was a haven for socialist-oriented German immigrants. Schimmelfennig apparently had some connection with the organization which stemmed from his revolutionary activities in London. His faction of exiles (which included Carl Schurz and August Willich) vied with Karl Marx and the Communist League for influence over the Der Wecker and Turnzeitung (the national Turnvereine publication) both of which were published in the same second story office of the Baltimore Turnvereine building. Company A was entirely recruited from Philadelphia and, in fact, was the first company mustered into Federal service on August 25, 1861. The War Department ordered Von Hartung to take the company to garrison Fort Delaware, part of the coastal defenses of Philadelphia, where company A remained until early October. Von Mitzel remained in Philadelphia where he continued recruiting until he was joined by the main body of the regiment in late September, his new recruits filling out the ranks of Company K.

Although most of the regiment was recruited in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Throughout the fall of 1861, numerous efforts were made (mostly in Pennsylvania) to find additional recruits to bring the regiment up to strength. Most of those efforts were aimed at recruiting Company C, but those efforts ultimately failed. But quite a few new recruits did join the regiment as individuals (such as Fabricius and Henry Krauseneck), mostly through the efforts of two recruiting detachments that were assigned to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but also through the efforts of sympathetic civilians in other cities. In addition, it should be pointed out that Charles Bollstetter was also an interesting character: he was a seven-year veteran of the Wuerttemberg Army and a former instructor at the Wuerttemberg Military Academy.