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Capt. John Underhill
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Founder of the oldest and largest Underhill family in the U.
S. and Canada. Born in the Netherlands to English parents, he became a professional
soldier and was brought to Massachusetts in 1630 to train the colony’s militia. He
resided Boston, MA; Dover, NH; Stamford, CT; New Amsterdam; and Flushing, Southold,
Setauket and Oyster Bay, all on Long Island, NY. Cadet in the Guard of the Prince of Orange 1628, Captain Pequot War 1637, Indian War 1643-4, Anglo-Dutch War 1653. Member General Courts (Legislatures) of Massachusetts Bay and New Haven, Council of New Netherland, and Hempstead Convention of 1665; Selectman of Boston, Governor of Dover, Sheriff of Flushing, High Constable and Undersheriff of North Riding of Yorkshire on LI. Author of Newes from America 1638. |
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| Attorney for Matinecock Indians who gave him 150 acres near Oyster Bay, named "Killingworth" after his father’s birthplace, and where he lived and lies buried. His family were among the earliest Quakers. First wife Helena de Hooch, second wife Elizabeth Feake (her mother was Anya Seton’s heroine in The Winthrop Woman). Descendants spread up Hudson Valley to Vermont, across New York to Ohio, and throughout the West. | |||
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THERE IS NO PORTRAIT OF
CAPT. JOHN The Society is often asked about the alleged portrait of Captain John Underhill of New York, first presented to the public in 1932 as the frontispiece to both Volume 1 of the Underhill Genealogy and Henry C. Shelley’s biography John Underhill Captain of New England and New Netherland. The portrait has since been reproduced in many other publications. Many Underhills have displayed copies of it in their homes, and there are descendants who have felt that they resembled this likeness of their ancestor. However, in 1976 the Society quietly stopped using the portrait, after it became apparent that it was a fraud. According to the Society’s Annual Report for 1932, the portrait was discovered in London in 1928 by an art dealer employed by Myron C. Taylor, who brought it back to America and displayed it in his home at Locust Valley, Long Island. The portrait was unsigned, but the dealer thought that it was either by Van Dyke, Mireveldt, or Janssen. |
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It was allegedly painted in 1638, when Captain John Underhill made a return visit to London. In the version of the portrait published in 1932 the words "John Underhill of Warwickshire" appear in the upper right portion, but these are not found on the portrait itself. On the back of the portrait was a label (reproduced on the reverse of the frontispiece to Volume 1) which reads as follows: "A Portrait of John Underhill Esq. of Warwickshire son of Thomas of Barton on the Heath and brother of Sir Edward Underhill Kt of Eatington. He, John, went to New England with Governor Winthrop to train the people in military discipline and was appointed Captain in command of the New England detachment by Sir Henry Vane. He was made Governor of Dover in Piscataqua. He died at Killingworth 1672." A second label reads "Relined and restored October 1866." The unexpected appearance of this portrait was met with surprise and also with some skepticism, since there was no provenance to show where the picture had been for nearly three hundred years, and no known Underhill will, inventory, or other family document had ever mentioned its existence. Among those who were skeptical was the scholar John H. Morrison, whom Mr. Taylor had commissioned to research the Underhill ancestry in England. In his 1932 book The Underhills of Warwickshire Morrison makes no mention of any portrait of the Captain. In spite of this Mr. Taylor had the portrait published, and it hung in his house at Locust Valley until his death in 1960, after which it became the property of the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA), which still owns it and displayed it for many years. When I first began to research my Underhill ancestry in the 1950s, I was naturally much interested in the portrait, as relatively few ancestral likenesses survive from colonial times. I noticed, however, that the label identifying the portrait was in a much later handwriting than that of the 1630s. The names of the Captain’s father and brother given in the label are incorrect, but match the names given in the Captain’s biography published in 1882 in the British Dictionary of National Biography (the correct ancestry remained unknown until the research of Mr. Morrison). It therefore appeared that the label might be younger than the painting by at least 274 years. The mystery deepened around 1966 when my mother saw a color reproduction of the portrait on display in the gift shop of Burdine’s, a Miami department store. There was a label on the back in a language which she couldn’t read, but it clearly did not mention the name Underhill. On my next trip to Florida I went to the store and found that the label, in Italian, stated that this was a copy of Van Dyke’s portrait of Viscount Stafford, from the original now in the Museum of Art, São Paulo, Brazil. At the New York Public Library I read the Dictionary of National Biography’s account of Stafford, which identified him as William Henry Howard (1614-1680), a member of the well-known Howard family whose senior member is the Duke of Norfolk. The account revealed that he was twice painted by Van Dyke, one portrait then (1882) being owned by the Marquis of Bute and the other by the Duke of Norfolk. It is the latter portrait that we are concerned with. It was reproduced in 1908 in Brenan and Statham’s The House of Howard, but as an engraving in which the features are slightly distorted so that I was still uncertain it was the same portrait. About 1973 I noticed an entry in the catalog of a New York print shop for a copy of Van Dyke’s Viscount Stafford. This turned out to be a full color reproduction (printed in Italy from the original at São Paulo), and it matched the alleged Underhill portrait exactly. There was no longer any question that the alleged portrait of Captain John Underhill was a copy of Van Dyke’s portrait of Viscount Stafford. I purchased a copy of this print and it is now in the collection of the Society. About 1980 a representative of SPLIA advised me that tests on the portrait in their possession had shown that the paint was about 100 years old, not 300. Tests on other alleged 16th and 17th century Underhill portraits given to SPLIA from the Taylor estate showed similar results (for these portraits see the Bulletin, October 1974, pages 12-13). It seems clear that sometime in the late 19th century or early 20th century an artist made an exact copy of the Van Dyke portrait of Stafford. This was a perfectly legitimate exercise, as long as the copy was identified as such. However, the art dealer employed by Mr. Taylor, having failed to find any portrait of Capt. John, apparently took the copy of the Van Dyke, added false documentation, and presented it as a likeness of the Captain. Obviously, if he had not perpetrated this fraud, he would have lost a large commission. Mr. Taylor’s generosity to the Underhill Society is well known. Without him none of the 1932 publications would have been possible, and the Society itself probably would not have survived. There is no question that he sincerely believed that he had found his ancestor’s portrait. He was by no means the only American to fall victim to such a fraud. In 1976 I presented the evidence and arguments against the portrait to the Society’s Board, and they decided to quietly withdraw it from use. The Board chose not to publicize my discovery because of the embarrassment it might cause to the Society, to members who cherished copies of the portrait, and especially to Mr. Taylor’s family. However, since 1976 the Society has told the true story to anyone who inquired about the portrait. I think the time has now come when the truth should be told to everyone. It could in fact be even more embarrassing to the Society if an outside party made the same discovery and told it to the world. We must acknowledge that the likeness we have believed to be the Captain’s actually is that of an entirely different person, and that there is no known portrait of Capt. John Underhill. Harry Macy, Jr., is a former President of the Underhill Society. He is a professional genealogist, and since 1987 has been Editor of The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, the second-oldest genealogical journal in the United States.
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