Henry P. Underhill was born around 1836 in New York to Henry and Julie Underhill. His father was a farmer who owned $12,000 of real estate and $25,000 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Macedon, New York. By 1860, he was also working as a farmer, and he owned $5,000 of real estate and $500 of personal property.

 

In August 1862, he received a commission as a captain in Company B of the 160^th New York Infantry. The regiment took part in the siege of Port Hudson, the Red River campaign, and the Shenandoah Valley campaign. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in February 1865, and he mustered out on November 1, 1865.

 

He returned to Macedon after the war, and he married Mary A. Bickford on September 26, 1866. She probably died in the late 1800s. In September 1868, he received an appointment as a local postmaster. By 1870, he was working as a produce dealer in Macedon, and he owned $4,500 of real estate and $500 of personal property. He married a woman named Ellen in the 1870s, and they apparently had no children. They lived in Baltimore, Maryland, and he worked as a clerk. By the late 1880s, he was working as a bank director and a lumber manufacturer. A local writer declared him “one of Baltimore’s most prominent citizens.” He died from a “rupture of a blood vessel in the brain” in Baltimore on October 4, 1889, while attending the Crescent Democratic Society.

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