Jacob Uhl was a farmer from Crawford County, Ohio who served as a musician (later as a private) in Co. C, 49th Ohio Infantry. Uhl was born in Bavaria in February 1833. About 1837-1838 his family immigrated to America and settled in Ohio, where Jacob’s younger brother, Daniel, was born in August of 1838. Jacob Uhl survived the war and apparently inherited all or part of the family farm on the death of his father, Benedict Uhl (b. ca. 1800). At the time of the 1870 census Jacob Uhl was living on the family farm in Cranberry Township with his wife, Margaret (born in Bohemia in March 1840), and their two young children. The couple eventually had at least six children and were still living at the time of the 1920 census. The language of Jacob Uhl’s letters reveals some influence of his German heritage, particularly in the form of phonetic spellings. However, Uhl probably received his early education in English, and as an adult, English was his first language with features probably influenced by the regional speech of central Ohio. The letters were presumably written to his brother, Daniel.