AMERICA THE GREAT MELTING POT

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Direct descendant is highlighted in red

CHILDREN with Helena

1. John Underhill b. 11 Apr 1642

2. Elizabeth Underhill b.1636

CHILDREN with Elizabeth Feakes

1. Deborah Underhill b. 22 Feb 1664

2. Hannah Underhill b. 02 Dec 1666

3. Elizabeth Underhill b. 02 Jul 1669

4. David Underhill b. Apr 1672

From Adam and Anne Mott, Cornell, 1890
"The Underhills are from an ancient and honorable family of Warwickshire, England. Captain John Underhill, the immigrant, was descended from the Underhills of Huningham in Warwickshire, a town about four miles west of Kenelworth, on the River Learne. During the reign of Elizabeth, the prosperity of the family seems to have been at its height. They owned land in many places. A Sir Hercules Underhill was Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, who made him Bishop of Oxford in1589, and he died in 1592.

The immigrant, John Underhill, finally settled on a tract of land he purchased from the Indians, in the town of Oysterbay, to which he gave the name of Kenelworth, which has been usually corrupted into Kellingworth. he became a member of the Society of Friends in his old age, and here he died in 1672.

His father, also called Captain John Underhill, and was a soldier in the personal train of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, accompanying him to the Netherlands, where Leicester commanded the combined forces against Spain. After the death of Leicester, 1588, Underhill remained with the army under Rober Devoreaux, Earl of Essex, the new favorite of the Queen, and he perhaps, remained in the Netherlands after the execution of Essex in 1601. The younger John Underhill, the immigrant, was probably born between 1595 and 1600. It seems certain that he spent much of his youth in Holland, or in the service of Maurice of Nassau. Prince of Orange, the greatest commander of his age, and in whose camp the warlike youth of that day sought instruction in the art of war.

In the army in Netherlands young Captain John Underhill found himself a fellow soldier of Captain Miles Standish, and of course he saw much of the Puritans who had found refuge there, from England. It is said that it was proposed to Underhill to go with the Puritan Pilgrims to Plymouth in the immigration of 1620, but it was Captain Miles Standish who was finally employed to train the Plymouth Militia. It was ten years later when Captain John Underhill sailed from Yarmouth, on the 7th of April, 1630, with John Winthrop and his nine hundred immigrants to Boston, then about being founded, under an agreement to train the Militia of this new settlement.
John Underhill was sworn freeman of Boston on the 18th of May, 1631, and was one of the first deputies to the General Court. One of the earliest acts of the new government was to order that the first Thursday of every month be general training day of Captain Underhill's Company, at Boston.

Captain John Underhill brought with him to Boston his first wife, a lady from the Netherlands, and the records of the old South Church, in Boston, tell that "Helena, wife of our brother John Underhill," was admitted to the Church on the 15th of September, 1633.

There was a good deal of party strife in the early days of Boston, as well as since, but in those days when the local government undertook to define and to enforce religious orthodoxy, as well as the good morals and honest dealing, there entered into party strife some elements from which we are fortunately free. John Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane represented opposite parties, and John Underhill who was with Vane rather than with Winthrop, was sometimes accused of failure in morality as well as of fairly in orthodoxy. But his abilities as a soldier were not questioned, and in 1637 his friend Sir Henry Vane, then in power, put him in command of troops of the Colony, and sent him to Saybrook, Connecticut, against the Indians, and he destroyed the Indian forst on Mystic River and broke the power of the Pequots. From this expedition he returned successful the same year. But soon afterwards, on the 7th of November, 1637, for sins of commission or for sins of omission, Captain Underhill was banished from Massachusetts. On this, in 1638 he returned to England and there printed a book entitled "New of America," etc., "by Captain John Underhill, a commander in the warres there." The book gave a good account of the Pequot war, where, as above stated, he had been very successful.
"Myself," he wrote, "received an arrow through my coat sleeve, and a second against my helmet on the forehead, so if God in his Providence had not moved the heart of my wife to persuade me to carry it along with me, I had been slain." Let no man despise advice and council from his wife, though she be a woman," add the gallant Captain with emphasis."

On his return to America he went to Dover, NH and became Governor. There was interference again from Governor Winthrop. Captain Underhill had to return to Boston and confess his immorality. After six months of good behavior his banishment was lifted. John Underhill then turned his interests to Long Island Sound and the more tolerant Dutch. He spoke their language and knew their customs. When "Governor Kieft, in an attempt to intimidate the Indians, made a midnight attack, in February, 1643, upon an unsuspecting encampment, where the Indian had their women and children, many of whom were killed, and this had so exasperated them, that all the tribes seemed to unite in a fierce war on the Dutch." The Dutch applied to New England for assistance and asked Captain John Underhill for help. Eventually he led a very successful attack upon the Indians at Hempstead. "They reported that they left a hundred and twenty savages dead on the field, with only a loss on their own side of one man killed and three wounded." He led another attack on Greenwich, and Underhill returned to New Amsterdam in triumph. However, there were tensions between the Dutch and the English and with their two countries. Underhill sided with the English and in 1653 commanded the attack on the Dutch Fort of Good Hope, near Hartford. When peace came again, "Captain Underhill oftained from the Matinecock Indians a tract of land in Oyster Bay, where he finally settled.

About 1658 he married Elizabeth Feakes, sister of Hannah Feakes, the second wife of John Bowne of Flushing, one of the most prominent and faithful members of the Society of Friends. "Thus John Underhill, the Captain in a hundred fights, came at length under the peaceful influence of the Quakers, and in the end became himself a member of the Society."

Captain John Underhill's last will is dated 18th of September, 1671. He gives the use of his whole estate to his
"wife, Elizabeth Underhill, during her widowhood; but if she marry, then my brother John Bowne and Henry Townsend and Matthew Pryor and my son John Underhill, I empower hereby that they see to ye estate that ye children be not wronged nor tunred off without some proportionable allowance, as ye estate will afford, and that my son Nathaniel remain with his mother until 21 years." etc.

Nathaniel remained with his mother until 21, as provided in the will, and then moved to Westchester and married, and in 1686-7, March 22, Nathaniel Underhill and Mary his wife, of the County of Westchester, conveyed all their interests in Oysterbay "which is the land that my father, John Underhill Sen. lived upon, with forty acres in the wood which I bought of the Indians," to his half-brother, John Underhill, who thus acquired the whole estate."

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