Felix Kirk Zollicoffer (May 19, 1812 – January 19, 1862) was a newspaperman, three-term United States Congressman from Tennessee, officer in the United States Army, and a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War. He led the first Confederate invasion of neutral Kentucky and was killed in action at the Battle of Mill Springs, the first Confederate general to perish in the Western Theater.

Early life and career

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Felix K. Zollicoffer was born on a plantation in Bigbyville in Maury County, Tennessee, son of John Jacob and Martha (Kirk) Zollicoffer. He was a descendant of immigrants from Switzerland who had settled in North Carolina in 1710. His grandfather George had served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, and had been granted a tract of land in Tennessee as a reward for his military service. Young Zollicoffer attended the "field schools" in the area and spent one year at Jackson College in Columbia, Tennessee. He left school at the age of sixteen, became an apprentice printer, and engaged in newspaper work in Paris, Tennessee, from 1828–1830. When the paper failed, he moved to Knoxville in 1831 and spent two years as a journeyman printer working for a local newspaper there. He became editor and part owner of the Columbia Observer in 1834. He was elected State Printer of Tennessee in 1835. On September 24, 1835, he was married in Columbia to Louisa Pocahontas Gordon. She would bear him fourteen children, but only six lived through infancy.

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