Roots & Roads

My grandfather George Underwood accomplished a strange feat. He united the two classes of slave holders and non-slave holders which were quite separate. He married a slave holder’s daughter, Mary Martin, who could have had a female slave, but she was averse to have anything to do with slavery. Her father Henry A. Martin was a plantation overseer though he never owned a slave. Mary Martin had often stood between slaves and the lash and used to slip something into the hands of the black children when rations were short. 

George and Mary Martin Underwood moved to western Virginia after the Indian War, which opened up the country west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.[1] They moved in 1809 when my father, Wm. Owens Underwood was nineteen years old and settled upon a tract of land which the Indians had just left. This was at Farmington, Virginia and West Virginia after the Civil War of 1861-65. There was no slave labor there at that time and never many slaves, as it was so near the line of Pennsylvania that the slaves could easily escape if not well treated.

Grandfather and his sons John, Henry, William, Thomas and David Fendall worked the farm. There were two reasons why they were poor. It was a poor rocky soil, and Grandfather was a drunkard. When Wm. O. Underwood was twenty three years old, he married Catherine Hill (in 1813).He first settled on a part of his father’s farm which he undertook to break up, but it was such hard poor land he became discouraged and hired out by the year to a man named Ice, who had a sawmill.

Here he worked until my mother died in 1820. At first they lived in a log house built by himself and afterwards used as a schoolhouse where I first went to school and learned my letters from a shingle. For a window one log was cut out all the way across the wall and slats were put up and down on which paper was pasted over the opening. The benches were split logs and a big fireplace gave warmth in cold weather. I suppose, but I do not know, that my brother Abram was born here in 1814. The year 1816 was known as a hard year. There was frost everywhere and hardly any grain was raised. 

Father worked there for a peck of corn a day. He moved to a house he built down at “Ice’s Mill” which was rather more comfortable being built of hewn logs. It had only one large room. This house was standing in 1882 in pretty good repair. My brother Jarret who died when eighteen months old and myself were born there. 

When I went back to Virginia in 1876, I found a grandson of Old Ice still living in the old place. An old woman 90 years old was sitting on the doorstep and as I told my name she started up saying, “Are you the son of Wm. Underwood?” and “What is your name?” Enoch–“I was with your mother when you were born. The old house is standing yet. I will go with you to see it.” At the sight of the old house the past all came back to me. It was moved from the original spot, but was not changed in direction. 

I could tell the corner where my mother’s bed was and where she lay so white and still when she was so sick. She died on April 24th, 1820. 

My memory goes back to that time and perhaps earlier. I was born on March fifth 1817, and so I was a little over three years old, but I remember us well, as though it were last night. Of seeing her lying on the bed and how pale and sick she looked. I remember her being put in a box and carried up the hill. My brother Abram and I standing at the south side of the grave. I looking in and wishing I might go too. My brother Jarrett died twelve days before my mother, and they were buried in Ice’s field, a pasture lot where there were a number of graves. In 1836, my father had a piece of hewn sandstone put up to mark the spot. 

I can remember an incident which occurred a few months before my mother’s death, when I was not more than two and a half years old. Our house was in the bend of a creek with a ledge of rock opposite. The water rippled over the stones and the minnows darted about. My brother and I walked out on the stones. My foot slipped and, the stones being slippery, I could not get up. I thought the minnows would bite me. I can see my mother coming out the door. She had on a shirtwaist that was low in the neck.[2] Her long hair was combed back. She came laughing and running down the bank. This was my first fright and the first thing I distinctly remember. 

On my mother’s death my father took my brother and myself to my Grandmother Underwood [Mary Martin Underwood], 13 miles away, my brother riding behind and I before him on the horse. We went up the valley of the Buffalo Creek till we came to James Run.[3] Grandfather’s place was about a mile up the creek, and from the creek to the house was a lane. I remember how I looked down the lane to see my mother come. I went out and sat on the doorstep covered all over with loneliness. How sad I felt! 

I remember how the shadows of the old tall gate post kept creeping up till it came to the house, and they took me to bed and I cried and cried. I do not know how long. It was my first great sorrow. The deepest saddest loneliness I have ever experienced to this hour! 

I recall many things that happened about this time which are scarcely worth mentioning. I remember lighting Grandmother’s pipe under the forestock as she spun and learning to smoke by trying the pipe to see if it would go. [4]

There was a poor old man named Jacob who had the “phthisic” and who went around coughing with his hand over his chest, saying, “This cough will be the death of me.” [5] He carried a pouch and a narrow hoe used for digging ginseng. He would dig enough to pay for his dinner or night’s lodging. He came to stay overnight with us. His hoe was beautiful. I wanted it. He did not rise very early, and in the morning before he was up I took it and hid it under the bee-bench.[6] When he got ready to go he could not find his hoe. The whole family hunted, and I with them, but it was gone, and the old man went off without it. And then I was just foolish enough to get the hoe and go to digging with it! 

Grandmother asked, “Where did you get that hoe?” 

I replied, “I found it under the bee-bench,” and this was my first theft. 

I was quite bashful and had a habit of running off and hiding if we were going to have company. They used to torment me. They would catch me and kiss me because I was a poor little orphan boy. 

One Sunday morning I heard that company was coming to spend the day. The first thing they knew, I was missing. I was right on the hillside in a clump of bushes where I could see everything that was going on. I did not come out for dinner, and before night they began to be alarmed. I saw Aunt Betseylooking and heard them calling “Enoch!” and I saw Grandmother’s apron go up to her eyes. Along before sundown the company went home and I came out. Grandmother met me. She usually took me in charge instead of letting Grandfather. All she did was to tickle my legs with a switch under my tow shirt, which was my one garment in summer. [7]

“Didn’t you hear me call you?” 

I said, “Yes, but I did not want to come out while those folks were here!” And then I had to take the switching.

It was a great thing to find an opossum in persimmon trees. They are very fond of persimmons and get as fat as butter and are very good eating. When the frost comes the persimmons ripen and turn yellow and juicy, although good for nothing before. One moonlight night old Ventnor the dog set up a tremendous barking, and Fendall and Tommy came running to the house to tell us there was a big opossum in the persimmon tree. There he hung with his tail wound around a big limb just as if he were dead. One of the boys got a club and clubbed the old fellow loose–then skinned him and we had him to eat. They are curious creatures. You never know when they are dead for they never flinch. Feigning death is their only defense. 

Uncle Joe Morgan lived a half mile from Grandfather. He was a slave holder and owned a house wench named Chloe. Aunt Betsey was in the habit of visiting the young ladies of the family and one afternoon took me. I remember that when we came away Chloe came out of the kitchen with a piece of beautiful white bread covered with butter. 

When I went back to Virginia in 1840 I stayed with Uncle Tommy Underwood. He took me over to Joe Morgan’s who was then Postmaster. I introduced myself and told him I remembered his house maid Chloe. He opened the door to the kitchen and said, “Step in and talk with her!” I asked her if she remembered a little boy named Enoch. She said she did very well, but she did not know me. My white head had become brown and my blue eyes dark. When I told her I was that little boy, she almost sprang at me. Never was there a mother more glad to see her child than she was to see me. She brought in her son George, a fine boy 12 years old.

I was then corresponding with your mother. The postage was 25 cents, and as I paid the postage on hers each was 50 cents. On my way to the Post Office across lots I went past Aunt Chloe’s kitchen door every week. George would come running out with a peach or an apple. 

The Methodist ministers who went around preaching (circuit riders) used to stop there and stay overnight. While I was there the Presiding Elder came and preached a sermon against abolitionists. He said, “Just as like as not there were some of them about now, and they ought to be put on a rail and carried out of the country.” 

I talked it over with Uncle Tommy, and he thought that Uncle Joe must have told him about Chloe and me. Before I came away I talked with Uncle Joe about what he intended to do with Jeff and Chloe who had served him so faithfully. He said he had no other intention than to leave them in slavery, but when I went back in 1876, Clemmy, his son, told me that before his father’s death he sent Jeff, Chloe, and their son George to Pittsburgh and set them free. 

During the four years that my brother and I spent at Grandfather’s, we were sent to school a short term in the log house built by my father. Already described as a schoolhouse. The teacher was an old man named Samuel Walls, whom they could get for nothing. As he could not see very well, he could not attend to recitations and overlook the school at the same time, so he used to sit his son Sammy behind him to watch the scholars and report to him. The larger boys and girls stood this for a day or two and then took Sammy out into the woods nearby, pulled down a branch of a beech tree, and told him they would hang him and leave him there to die which scared him almost to death and put a stop to his reporting. Then they did as they were a mind to. The boys kissed the girls, threw paper wads, etc. There were no classes in school. Each scholar recited by himself and as there were few books one would serve for half a dozen to study out of in turn. 

My grandmother fixed me up with a hat, for I had none, and with a little bunch of dinner sent me off to school with Aunt Betsey to introduce me. I had seen a cider mill and a treadmill, and my idea of school was a large wheel upon which the children rode around crying, “School! School!” but what I found to be the fact was that a number of boys and girls were sitting on a split log with their feet dangling, no books, no slates and nothing to do but sit there till their backs broke waiting to learn their ABCs from the shingle when called. The shingle was whittled in the shape of a paddle with a handle at one end and the ABCs at the other. The teacher would call up the first boy and standing him with his back so he could look over his shoulder would, with a long pointer, touch a letter saying, “What is that?” Another shingle held syllables of two letters as ab, ba, be, which we learned by rote. Some incidents connected with school I remember quite well. I had better dinner than some (batter cakes fried in fat). Perry Arndt had no mother. I had lost mine and was not over my grief. I took Perry off outside and gave him my dinner. Bill Hawkins gave him part of his. When I got home I was in trouble at once for my brother had told how I was supplying the whole neighborhood. I go home crying.

During the afternoon Sammy Walls would grow tired and lie down and go to sleep. And all of the deviltry! This was the opportunity of boys and girls for school in the State of Virginia.

On my mother’s death, Father left Virginia and went to Crawford County, Southern Illinois. After he went, some people–Charles Martin, who also had some boys and girls–went also. They commenced on rented land, raised corn, and carried it to New Orleans on flat boats. 

In 1822, my father married Margaret Morgan. After four years of labor he had saved $100.00, a fortune for him. He went with it to Vermilion County, Illinois, bought 80 acres, built a log house, cultivated a little patch. Came back in the winter, January of 1824, to bring brother and I to his new home. He remained a few weeks, got leather and made us shoes. My own mother had had a riding coat. He took it to a man who made us each a roundabout. [8] How we got our pants I do not remember or that red hat!

March 24th, 1824 we started from Grandfather’s on an old gray mare. Four pack saddles packed with goods on each side loaded to balance. Father took my brother on behind and I before. When we rode about 40 miles to the Ohio River below Wheeling to meet the flat boat that he and two or three men had built on Beef Creek for the purpose of floating down the Ohio River. We left Grandmother crying. She walked out to the barn with her apron over her head. But the idea of riding was all that induced me to separate from Grandmother and Aunt Betsey. 

I went to bed the first night not knowing where I was. It puzzled my philosophy to know what kind of a world we had got into. Earth and trees moving. I never conceived the idea we moved! The first town we stopped at–Louisville, Kentucky–we washed, and after a day and night we reach rapids. Considered dangerous. The next morning the women and the children with the horses concluded to go round and meet us below. I refused to go. If I lost my father now I would lose all. The boat went down rapidly. The forward end struck. Next place we stop at, Cincinnati. My recollection of Cincinnati, it was very dirty. We landed for provisions and to get on land. Father looking around found a paper mill built of logs across a creek. We went up to see the mill rag pickers. The hopper ground pulp in the room below between two hot iron rollers. The stuff was pressed–brown paper! Great sight!

The curious part was that two wheels were running one way and the other another way. I stood and looked in amazement and from that seeming contradiction learned many lessons. It is not always that things seen in contradiction are working in harmony or together. 

At Evansville, Indiana we left the flat boat and took horses again, because travel was faster than by canoe and up the Wabash River. So we crossed the country, I do not know how many days, to Vermilion County. We reached the log cabin April 25th, 1824, one month and a day on the journey. The other two families kept the boat and floated down to the mouth of the Wabash expecting to get a permit and pull up the river. Left the boat there and got dry butternut logs which float easily, pulled up the river landing at Eugene, Indiana, fourteen miles from where Father settled in June.