Clark County Ohio Biographies
SILAS JEROME UHL, artist and portrait painter, Springfield. Genius is indigenous to Ohio, not only in her statesmen, military heroes, scholars, scientists, inventors and poets, but artists as well; and the subject of our sketch is destined to be—if he is not even now—an eminent illustration of our statement. Mr. Uhl’s family, for generations back, is one, on both sides, of remarkable longevity; his immediate ancestors came from Maryland and Pennsylvania, close to the dividing State line, and his parents, as also those of his wife, are still living, his father and mother being respectively about 67 and 64, and hale and hearty. Mr. S. Jerome Uhl was born in Holmes Co., Ohio, in 1841, hence has just completed his second score, and, having a most robust constitution, he is in the very prime of manhood in all the term implies. Mr. Uhl had quite a varied army experience, enlisting at first for three months in Co. E, of the 16th O. V. I., under Col. Irving, and, in the fall of 1861, he re-enlisted for the war, under Col. (afterward General) John F. DeCourcey, serving, in all, over three years and a half, the last nine months being one of the Veteran Reserve Corps; he took part in many of the battles in Western Virginia, among which were those of Phillippi, Carrick’s Ford, Cheat Mountain Gap and Cumberland Gap, and he was also for some time a prisoner of war at Vicksburg, and at Jackson, Miss., and at Cumberland Gap. He is a member of Anthony Lodge of F. & A. M., and Palestine Commandery, No. 33, of Knights Templar of Springfield. At an early age, young Uhl discovered an irresistible penchant for sketching and delineating, and so strong and dominating was this propensity that, after returning from the war, in 1865, he commenced in earnest the study of the limner’s art, making a specialty of the portrait branch of it; he studied under Hart, of Cincinnati, and traveled in the East, studying the best works, and has for several years been conducting a studio here with marked success, the products of his brush gracing to-day the parlors and drawing-rooms of all the prominent, leading and wealthy citizens of Springfield, and many of those of Cincinnati; as an evidence of the estimation in which his ability as an artist is held, he has already booked, for his prospective visit to the Continent, orders from a number of the wealthiest citizens and patrons of art here, for paintings to be executed by him while there, within the space of two years, to the aggregate amount of thousands of dollars; he expects to spend at least three years in the art centers of Europe, studying the best works of the most renowned masters of this art divine, among whose illustrious names, it is the prediction of the author of this sketch, that Uhl will erelong appear. Mr. Uhl married, in October, 1873, Miss Martha A. M. Philips, daughter of Jason P. Philips and sister of Jason W. Philips, of this city; they have a fine 5-year-old boy. Besides being an artist, Mr. Uhl is a whole-souled, genial gentleman of culture, refinement, and much personal magnetism; has lots of friends, and deserves them all; is a man of strikingly fine physique and personal appearance, and would always be singled out in a crowd as one above the ordinary.
NOTE.—Since the writing of this sketch, Mr. Uhl and family have departed for their continental sojourn above alluded to.
Source: The History of Clark County, Ohio, W. H. Beers & Co., 1881, page 936
