Tuesday, January 22, 2013

FROM KENILWORTH TO KILLINGWORTH



UNDERHILL/SMITH  9thGGF Captain John Underhill, 1630 immigrant
The journey back to Queen Elizabeth's "Keeper of the Wardrobe" -direct ancestry of the Underhill family from Hunningham, Warwickshire, England to Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York:
FROM KENILWORTH TO KILLINGWORTH
 as far back as:

Sir Hugh Underhill (1518 - 1593)
Son of Thomas  KEEPER OF THE WARDROBE for QUEEN ELIZABETH I at GREENWICH
 On 6 Feb 1563 he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth Keeper of the Wardrobe at the King's Manor at Greenwich. In 1563 he was elevated to be responsible for the Wardrobe of Beds. (This position was one of the highest maintaining the countless hangings of tapestry and the Cloths of State, the great carpets and all upholstering of chairs, stools, curtains, bedsteads, and more. In 1590 he was appointed by the Queen as Keeper of the Garden in the manor of East Greenwich. He is mentioned in several wills of the Royal Household, an indication that he was held in high regard.

Sir Thomas Underhill (1545 - 1591)
Son of Sir Hugh  KEEPER OF KENILWORTH CASTLE for EARL OF LEICESTER
Thomas was Keeper of the Wardrobe at Kenilworth Castle, to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester.  Kenilworth was given to Dudley by Queen Elizabeth, who would have visited him there during Thomas' appointment. In 1585 the Queen appointed the Earl of Leicester commander of her forces in the Netherlands, fighting with the Dutch against the Spanish. Thomas accompanied the Earl on this assignment. The fact that Thomas Underhill, son of a well-regarded member of her own household (Sir Hugh) was assigned to Kenilworth, shows the affection Queen Elizabeth I had both for Dudley and Underhill.

John Edward Underhill (1574 - 1608)
Son of Sir Thomas
John Underhill was a friend and companion to the Earls of Leicester and Essex, and while a youth held a commission in the Earl of Leicester's own Troop of Guards, that was sent to the assistance of the Dutch by Queen Elizabeth I. When the Netherlands offered their sovereignty to the Earl of Leicester, John Edward Underhill was the bearer of confidential dispatches to Lord Burleigh, the Queen's Minister. After the fall and execution of Leicester, he attached himself to the Earl of Essex. He accompanied Essex who captured Cadiz, Spain for the King of France, and was part of Devereux's expedition to the Azores, where Underhill was listed as dead in the muster rolls of Capt. Roger Orme's Company, 1608. 

Following his father's death, John Jr. and his siblings lived with his mother, HONOR/LEONORA PAWLEY (b. 1575, Cornwall) in the Netherlands with a group of Puritan exiles. While there he received military training as a cadet in the service of Philip Willam, the Prince of Orange, a great military strategist. She immigrated to the colonies in 1630, probably in the company of her son, John and his first wife and children.

Capt. John Underhill, Immigrant 1630
Son of John Edward
JOHN born near Kenilworth England about 1597.  He first married (1) Heylken (Helena) de Hooch 12 Dec 1628 at the Kloosterkerk at the Hague, Holland who died at Southold LI NY before 19 Aug 1658. He then married (2) ELIZABETH FEAKE  in 1658 Southold LI NY. Elizabeth was born about 1633 Watertown MA to Robert Feake and Elizabeth (Fones) Winthrop aka "The Winthrop Woman," and died at Killingworth Oyster Bay LI before 4 Nov 1675. 

While in the Netherlands, John was a cadet in the guard of the Prince of Orange in 1628.  It was there that young Captain John Underhill became a fellow soldier of Captain Miles Standish. In 1620, Standish was employed to train the Plymouth Militia. Ten years later John Underhill, now Captain, sailed from Yarmouth with John Winthrop and his nine hundred immigrants to the Bay Colony, under an agreement to train the Militia of the new settlement of Boston.  A year later, Underhill was sworn freeman 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.
Captains Underhill and Daniel Patrick became the first paid military officers in Massachusetts Bay.

Capt. John Underhill is given credit for the colonists' victory in the Pequot War in 1637 but soon after signed a petition in behalf of Anne Hutchinson and Rev. John Wheelwright and his citizenship rights in the colony were removed. He was banished and went to now called New Hampshire where he served as Governor of Exeter and Dover for a year. In 1641 his banishment was lifted and he returned to Massachusetts Bay Colony for a short time.               

In 1630, Underhill published a book titled: Newes from America; Or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England; Containing, A Trve Relation of Their War-like Proceedings These Two Yeares Last Past, with a Figure of the Indian Fort, or Palizado  

The immigrant, John Underhill, eventually settled on a tract of land he purchased from the Indians, in the town of Oyster Bay, which he named after his birthplace, Kenilworth -spelled Killingworth. He became a member of the Society of Friends in his old age, and here he died in 1672. President Theodore Roosevelt provided a speech at the dedication of a monument to Captain Underhill at the Underhill Burying Ground, Oyster Bay, 1908. 
Descendancy through Capt. John and Elizabeth Feake (dau. of "The Winthrop Woman")
Deborah Underhill (1659 - 1698) married Henry Townsend of Oyster Bay (1649-1703)
Daughter of Capt. John

Uriah Townsend (1698 - 1767)
Son of Deborah

Robert Townsend (1728 - 1803)
Son of Uriah

Uriah Townsend (1753 - 1804)
Son of Robert

Ezra Edwin Townsend (1788 - 1851)
Son of Uriah

Rebecca Townsend (1808 - 1878) married George Walter Watson
Daughter of Ezra Edwin

Marietta Watson (1830 - 1890)
Daughter of Rebecca

Emma Jane Amrhine, Emerine (1860 - 1933)
Daughter of Marietta

Leon Vern Smith 
Son of Emma Jane



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