John Curtiss Underwood

John Curtiss Underwood (March 14, 1809 – December 7, 1873) was an attorney, abolitionist politician and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Virginia and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Early and family life Born in Litchfield, New York, Underwood graduated from Hamilton College in 1832, and was a founding member of Alpha Delta Phi. Underwood traveled to what was then western Virginia after graduation and taught children of the Jackson family in Clarksburg for two years. He then returned to New York to read law and began a private legal practice, which he continued in New York and Virginia from 1839 to 1856. On October 21, 1839, in Fauquier County, Virginia, Underwood married Maria Gloria Jackson, one of his former pupils. She was a granddaughter of Edward B. Jackson (whose brother John G. Jackson and great-nephew John Jay Jackson Jr. were also federal judges); her cousin (on both sides) Stonewall Jackson became a distinguished Confederate general. The Underwoods farmed in Herkimer County, New York, for about a decade. They had two daughters and a son, Edward J. Underwood (1842–1907), before moving to Clarke County, Virginia, near Maria's family.