John W. January, identified by pencil inscription on the reverse and corroborated by published biographical accounts, appears in this pair of cartes de visite from the Studio of Thomas Mills in Peoria, Illinois. January served with the 14th Illinois Cavalry and was captured in 1864, held first at Andersonville and then at a prison hospital in Florence, South Carolina, where malnutrition, scurvy, and gangrene so damaged his feet that he amputated them himself with a penknife rather than wait for army surgeons to act.

One card shows January seated with his coat removed to shirtsleeves and vest, a matched pair of below-the-knee prosthetic legs strapped over his trousers and terminating in leather boots, his hands resting on the straps as though presenting the devices to the camera. Its companion shows him standing at full height in a formal dark suit and tie beside a draped table and ornate carved mantel, the prosthetics concealed beneath his trousers. His mustache and side-parted hair match between the two poses, and both were taken against the same fringed curtain and pedestal backdrop, confirming a single studio sitting.

January arrived at a New York hospital in February 1865 weighing only forty-five pounds and spent seven months in recovery before returning to farm life near Minonk, Illinois, where his disability earned him a pension higher than the standard veteran's rate. He continued to appear at reunions of former prisoners of war into the 1880s and 1890s wearing these same prosthetic legs, later relocating to Dell Rapids, South Dakota, where he died in 1906.

The reverse of each mount carries the printed imprint of the Studio of Thomas Mills, corner of Main and Adams Streets, Peoria, Illinois, established 1864, with the sitter's name inscribed in pencil at the top of one card.