A Family Tapestry

Grandfather Wm. O. Underwood lived on the farm mentioned in Vermilion County near Danville, Illinois until 1836. In the early 80s, Emma with Father visited the place owned then by a Mr. Ross, but to this day (1927) still called the “Underwood Farm.” The house was frame over logs with a wide fireplace, and we went upstairs to the low unplastered room where he slept with his brother Abram and where later this brother died, aged 14 years. He found the old nail in the corner where they hung their one pair of shoes after filling them with wet beans, hoping the swelling of the beans would stretch the shoes to fit them both! The little reticent brother was left to great loneliness and a grief that lasted through his life. His companion thereafter was a dog, and in relating the foregoing narration in his last illness his eyes filled with tears as he told of the loss of his brother and later the losing of his dog. 

He attended school at intervals in Danville and spoke of his humiliation in being put in a class with children one half his age and size, for he was a man in stature, but in a few weeks he had out-stripped them and found his own place.[1] Abram was buried on the farm among a few neighboring graves, and in this visit spoken of, the stone was standing with date of his death and the inscription “My Brother Sleeps.”

In the year 1836 Grandfather W.O.U. again migrated, this time to Wisconsin Territory, and settled two miles west of what is now Wauwatosa on the Menomonee River. He built a log house in the woods, as he had been accustomed in Virginia, two cabins with a breezeway between. [2] There were few settlers and no schools. There were several little dark haired half-sisters and a half-brother.

Father was about 19 years of age, and after helping the family to settle he walked to and from Danville two or three times to an academic school–the only one he knew about.[3]The distance from his home in Wauwatosato Chicago was 80 miles and from Chicago to Danville 90 miles. He tells of stepping from one hummock to the next in the marshes now covered by Chicago.

When he finally returned to his home he found the little family still without educational advantages and talked the matter over with his father who said he had heard a new family had come from the far East and had settled in the “Oak Openings,” now near Pewaukee, twenty miles from Wauwatosa. That they had daughters who were educated and had taught in some of the settlements. After some urging his father consented to see this family and started on “Old Pony” (perhaps so named because he was very large) and who, like his Master William, was a veteran in the Black Hawk Wars and set out.[4]

Upon arriving at the cabin he found the mother and one daughter at home. Told his errand, she decided that this daughter might go, but the young lady pleaded delay so as to get her wardrobe ready. As this was and is always a legitimate excuse it was accepted, but time was fleeting even then. So he returned on foot, leaving his horse as a sort-of hostage and to insure the coming of the young woman who bashfully refused to ride “double.” How he crossed the two or three considerable “cricks,” as he called them, which were on the trail, history is silent. 

Imagine the little girl from the Connecticut Valley, Massachusetts with carpet-bag strapped to her saddle faring forth alone like Spencer’s Una and the Lion, guided only by the casual axe marks on the trees and the homing instincts of Old Pony.[5] At nightfall the eldest son walked out to meet the wayfarer, to let down the bars and to guide her to the clearing–neither knowing they were both marching to their fate, for as she came, a fair sunny-haired girl mounted on her white steed, the tall dark haired lad saw and was conquered. 

She taught for several terms in the cabins of the settlers. 

In 1840, Father went to Virginia to look up the land abandoned when his father William left Virginia. He taught school and lectured while there, remaining more than a year. In the foregoing narrative he mentions he was corresponding with our mother, the little school teacher. Deciding he did not care to live or farm in a mountainous and slave holding state, he returned to Wisconsin Territory to take up his life work as he supposed on a farm. His father was now rich in land and settled his children as they married in quarter sections.[6]

On June 14, 1842, Enoch D. Underwood and Harriet F. Denny were married in the log cabin of her parents and went to live on their own in the southwest part of Wauwatosa. He had had no early educational advantages beyond those mentioned, but his proficiency during that time was remarkable, and as he continued to be a student of nature and of life, few men were better informed on all vital subjects. He was interested in the questions which agitated the minds of the early settlers entering heartily into abolition and temperance reform. Having natural gifts as a speaker he soon entered into public life, and his friends prophesied political honors for him, had he not espoused unpopular causes. Up to the time of the Civil War, his house was known as a station on the “Underground Railway,” a secret thoroughfare from the “Mason & Dixon” line to Canada.[7]

His religious vision, having changed from skepticism to a firm belief in Christ, he devoted ever after his time and his talents toward the advancement of Christianity. To those of his family who remembered and loved him the following personal experience told in his words is inserted: “My associations and training was all opposed to religion until my 23rd year. The Lord took me up in the Wilderness without the means of grace. And after the most intense mental suffering for three months on account of my sins, without a human being to speak a word of comfort, Christ was revealed to me as the all sufficient Savior. I was baptized in the Menomonee River just where the railroad bridge now crosses.”[8]

On the wooded farm where he settled, there stood for many years in a depression of ground where a pond had been a walnut tree, the sole reminder of a once thick woods. When the farm was sold in 1859, he asked the purchaser that the tree be preserved. Later in driving by he was heard to express the regret that the tree had been sacrificed adding, “I could never make up my mind to cut it down for under it I made my decision for Christ.”

In due time he was called to the ministry by the people among whom he had labored. Feeling his unfitness and lack of preparation he long hesitated, but when duty was made plain to him he accepted his life’s work humbly.