Uhl, Anton

UHL, SANFORD

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 2/16/2011 at 15:18:37

Monona County History-1982

The Uhl Family
Anton Uhl, one of a family of nine children, came from a farm near the Black Forest in Germany. This family was Anton’s father second family of nine, his first wife having borne him nine children before she died.

The Uhl’s arrived at various times after 1869. The first ones helping the later ones financially was the custom for immigrants of that period. There were three girls Catherine, Barbara and Tresia. The boys were John, Joe, Kaspar, Anton, Martin and Isadore. Kaspar died before his children were grown and she took the family to Canada. The others settled in Monona and Woodbury counties. In the Mapleton telephone directory you can now find as many as five generations of Uhl’s and the offspring of Catherine Brenner, Barbara Ernst and Tresia Schoenherr.

Even though both parents were natives of Germany, scarcely any of them spoke German or kept up the old country customs. Many of the boys married America girls and seemed eager to take on the customs of this country.

Anton Uhl was one of the founders of St. Mary’s Catholic Church and school in Mapleton. Both English and German were used in the church on alternate Sundays until after World War I.

Of the second generation or first born in this country, Anton’s oldest son Dennis was the first to graduate from the new Mapleton High School in, as I remember it, a class of three. He studied Botany, Astronomy, and Latin, among other subjects.

Anton bought his first farm from the railway. He died a wealthy man at 52, leaving eight children and his wife Sarah Ellen Sanford Uhl.
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Submitted by Dennis Leo Uhl