My Name is Jacob is the story of Robert's great-grandfather Jacob Sell, born in 1836, the son of German immigrants, and raised on a farm in Indiana. He enlisted in the army at age twenty-four.He was assigned to Company F, Forty-Sixth Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment and sent to battle in Mississippi River area. After three and a half years of battle, he and a group of his unit were captured in the Battle of Sabine Crossroads on the Texas-Louisiana border.They were taken to Andersonville Prison, where they spent the next year until war's end. He lived with the effects of imprisonment for the rest of his life.