[3][4] At the outbreak of the American Civil War, he joined up with the "Belle City Rifles", a Racine militia company, for service in the Union Army.

His family in Wisconsin, however, was told that he had been killed in action and held a funeral for him in Racine, Wisconsin—the captain of his company, William E. Strong, had seen him shot and reported that he believed him to be dead.

Upham was released in a prisoner exchange in 1862 and repatriated to Washington, D.C., where he was introduced to President Abraham Lincoln at a White House interview arranged by Wisconsin Senator James Rood Doolittle.

While stationed at Fort Monroe, he was detailed as officer of the guard, overseeing the temporary quarters of the then-imprisoned President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis.

[6] On June 27, 1887, a major fire started at Upham's lumber mill and spread across all of Marshfield, destroying 250 buildings—virtually the entire city.

[8] In 1894, Upham was the Republican Party of Wisconsin's nominee for Governor against incumbent Democrat George Wilbur Peck.

[2] He was an original Companion (#03124) of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, or the MOLLUS, founded in 1865 by and for commissioned officers who had served in the Union forces in the Civil War.

His grandfather, Jonathan Upham, was a soldier in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and was present at the surrender of Yorktown.

Some two years after the death of his first wife, Mary Kelly, in 1912, Upham, then 73, undertook a voyage along the Atlantic coast, that was forced by storm to harbor at Beaufort, North Carolina.