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EDWARD F. UNDERHILL By
John Lacoutoure SINCE I HAVE LIVED NOW for thirty years in "China Closet," Ed ward Underbill's summer home in Sconset and the first of the "Underhill Cottages," I thought it only fitting that I write a short article on this remarkable man who contributed so much to the early development of Sconset as a popular summer resort. Underhill was born in 1830 in the small village of Walcott located in Wayne County, New York State. Of Quaker stock, he was a descendant of Captain John Underhill, a famous colonial Indian fighter. At the age of eleven, Underbill's family moved to Utica, where he at tended school for two years. He then worked at various jobs which in cluded one year working on a farm. At age sixteen, he went to work in a large woolen mill with the idea of learning the business. However, during the first week of working in the woolen mill, he caught his hand in one of the machines and lost his fingers. In later years, he would oc casionally comment that cutting off his fingers opened the way for his becoming a "short hand" reporter. In 1847, Underhill first took up stenography and became a pupil of T.C. Leland's, one of the early disciples of phonography (i.e., the shorthand system) in America. After becoming fairly proficient as a short hand reporter, Underhill went to St. Louis, where he was employed first by The Republican and subsequently on The Reveille and The Intelligencer. It was here that he began some of his humorous sketches for which he is famous. Here also he was married to Mary Post of St. Louis. In 1850, Underhill was one of the American members of the Phonetic Council, whose recommended changes in phonography were published by Isaac Pitman in his textbook in 1851. In 1853, Mr. Underhill moved to New York, where he first worked for the New York Times as a reporter and then as a reporter for several years for the New York Herald Tribune. Here he became a close friend of Horace Greeley until the famous journalist died. In 1861, Mr. Underhill again became a reporter for The Times, initially as a war correspondent and soon afterwards as one of their Washington correspondents. Here while out on a war reporting mission, he was cap tured by Confederates and taken to Harper's Ferry, where he was tried as a spy before a court martial presided over by then colonel "Stonewall" Jackson. Although acquitted of being a spy, he was kept in the Charleston jail for a period of months.
