Greene-Black Hawk County IA Archives Biographies.....Underwood, James October 25, 1830 - November 22, 1901
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Author: THE UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY AND PORTRAIT GALLERY OF EMINENT AND SELF-MADE MEN – IOWA VOLUME (pg 80-82)

HON. JAMES UNDERWOOD

ELDORA

At an early day in the history of our country, three brothers by the name of 
Underwood emigrated from England.  Of these, one settled in Massachusetts, and 
was the ancestor of many of the Underwood’s of New England and the west; a 
second settled in Virginia, and from him sprang many of the name in the south 
and west.  The history of the third is not known with any degree of 
certainty.  David Underwood, a major at the battle of Bunker Hill, engaged in 
farming after the close of the war.  He had a son, Jonas, who also was a 
farmer, and lived to an old age.  He, too, had a son Jonas, who married Mary 
Vorse, and became the father of six sons and five daughters, of whom four sons 
and one daughter are now living.  Of these, Henry Underwood married Almira 
Cooley, and has four children, and is a farmer and stockdealer near Marengo, 
Illinois; Malinda is the wife of Harry McIntyre, trackmaster of the upper 
branch of the Des Moines Valley railroad; Dr. Myron Underwood, a physician at 
Eldora, Iowa, is a graduate of Rush Medical College, Chicago; he was a surgeon 
in the 12th Iowa regiment during the civil war; he married Sophia Ellis, and 
has four children living; David Underwood is a farmer and stockdealer at 
Steamboat Rock, Hardin county, Iowa; he married Ann Harnard, and has one son.  
James Underwood, our subject, a native of Montville, Geauga County, Ohio, was 
born on the 25th of October 1830.  His maternal great-grandmother was a 
relative of John Adams; his paternal grandmother’s name was Boydon.  His 
maternal grandfather, Henry Vorse, a millwright by occupation, was a man of 
superior intellect; being too young to enter the army, he served as page to an 
officer during the revolutionary war.  He had a family of five sons and three 
daughters, of whom four are now (1877) living.  Henry Vorse, about eighty-
three years of age, is a resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan; one of the daughters 
is living at Binghamton, New York; the younger brother, William Vorse, a 
mechanic, lives near St. Paul, Minnesota.  The mother of our subject, now 
eighty years old, is living with him.  His only paternal uncle, Asa B. 
Underwood, a resident of Grundy county, Iowa, is now over eighty years of age, 
and a man of unusual activity and intelligence.

Mr. Underwood passed his early life amid the scenes of what was then the far 
west.  He endured many hardships, and at the age of twelve years was able to 
do a man’s work chopping.  Although he labored under many disadvantages in 
acquiring an education, he studiously improved his opportunities and gained a 
fair knowledge of the ordinary English branches.

In the fall of 1843, his father moved, with a herd of cattle, to Riley, 
McHenry County, Illinois, where he purchased and improved a farm.  Here our 
subject was engaged in such work as is incident to the pioneers of a new 
country, and received some educational advantages.  He was accustomed to drive 
to Chicago with produce, and it is worthy of note, as showing the difference 
between prices then and now, that his hotel bill, for supper, lodging and 
breakfast for himself and hay for his horses, and two drinks of whisky, was 
fifty cents.  He remained on the farm until his nineteenth year, when he 
commenced to learn the carpenter and joiner’s trade, but only continued at it 
a few months.  He was next engaged in carrying goods and passengers westward 
from Elgin.  During the winter of his twentieth year, he taught 
school,”boarding around”, and receiving a compensation of ten dollars per 
month.  Purchasing his time of his father in the following spring, he bought a 
yoke of oxen and put in fifty acres of wheat and seven acres of oats.  He then 
entered school and studied until July and afterward harvested his grain, 
expending but five dollars for help.  During the next winter he taught the 
same school for sixteen and two-thirds dollars per month, and in the spring, 
buying two yokes of steers and a yoke of oxen broke prairie for one dollar and 
fifty cents per acre.  He next taught a school at twenty dollars per month, 
having sixty-four pupils, of whom fifty became teachers.  After the close of 
his school, he cut the timber and erected a barn, twenty-six by thirty-six 
feet and twenty feet high for his father for fifty dollars, it being the last 
payment on eighty acres of land which he had purchased of him.  He spent ten 
weeks in school at Mount Morris, Illinois, in the following fall, studying 
grammar, rhetoric, algebra and geometry, and also taking an active part in 
debating societies.  During the following winter he taught at Mount Morris for 
twenty-six dollars per month.  In the spring of 1854, in connection with his 
brother, he purchased the homestead, making a farm of three hundred and fifty 
acres.  He continued farming, teaching winters, until 1861, when, through 
embarrassment caused by becoming surety for a friend, he sold his farm, paid 
off his indebtedness, and removed to Steamboat Rock, Hardin county, Iowa.  
Here he engaged in general work and in farming until the 11th of August, 1862, 
when he enlisted as a private in company F, 32nd regiment Iowa volunteers.  
Going to Camp Franklin, Dubuque, he was appointed first duty sergeant in 
October, and on the 17th of November started for the south.  At St. Louis the 
regiment was divided, his company, with four others, going to Cape Girardeau.  
In the following July, with a lieutenant’s commissions, he recruited a company 
of colored troops.  In August, being taken violently ill, he was obliged to 
remain behind for a time, his company going south.  He afterward recruited 
some twenty-five more men, and joined the regiment at Helena, Arkansas.  It 
was very sickly, and they buried three hundred and eighty-three of their men 
between the 1st of September and the 1st of December.  

Mr. Underwood was in very poor health, often having to be brought in from 
picket duty, but kept up until the following July, when he was stricken down 
with fever and obtained a leave of absence of nineteen days, and went north to 
Marengo, Illinois.  Returning to his regiment, he was sent north on a 
surgeon’s certificate.   Finding that there was little prospect of his 
recovery, he on the 16th of December, sent in his resignation.

Being in a poor state of health, he worked at various things during the next 
few years, and in 1871 removed to Grundy County and engaged in farming, 
continuing that occupation until the present time.

In politics, Mr. Underwood is a thorough republican.  He was a strong 
abolitionist, and cast his first ballot for John P. Hale, being the only man 
in his town who voted that ticket.  At the next election all but thirteen 
persons in the town voted with him.  In the fall of 1860 he was captain of a 
company of “wideawakes” and in 1868, captain of a company of “tanners”.

From November 1, 1851, until 1861, he was treasurer of the school fund at 
Riley, McHenry County, Illinois, and during that time was several times town 
clerk.  In 1872 he was elected town trustee at Melrose, Iowa and during the 
past three years has been serving as assessor.  In October 1875, he was 
elected to the state legislature for a term of two years.

Mr. Underwood’s sympathies have always been with the laboring classes, and he 
has taken an active part in the grange movement.  He has been a leader in the 
local organizations, and is now (1877) a member of the executive committee of 
the state grange.  He has for many years been actively connected with 
agricultural societies, and has given much attention to raising fine stock.  
Himself a man of cultivated mind, he has always advocated that the farmer 
should be a man of the highest type of intellectual and moral worth.

Since June, 1850, he has been an active member of the Methodist church, and 
during much of that period has been superintendent of the Sabbath-school.  He 
has also been leader, trustee and steward, and in the autumn of 1857 was 
licensed as a local preacher.  In the fall of 1870 he was ordained a deacon.

Mr. Underwood was married on the 31st of March 1854, to Miss Melissa Gardner, 
eldest daughter of N.C. Gardner, postmaster at Union, McHenry County, 
Illinois.  He was formerly a farmer, and is an only son of his father, who 
also was an only son.  The family descended from the family who 
owned “Gardner’s Island.”  Mrs. Underwood’s mother was Susan Ann nee Sanders.  
Of her family two sons and four daughters are now living. 

Mr. Underwood has had six children:  Olin Clark, born November 27, 1855, who 
is now studying medicine; Osman Watson, born December 22, 1857, who died May 
7, 1862; James Myron, born October 22, 1859, now at home; Milton Ferrel, born 
July 29, 1866, who died July 11, 1868; Henry Mason, born February 9, 1869, and 
Luella, born November 9, 1871.


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