John C. Underwood (1809-1873)

Clarke County · dedicated 2021 · U.S. 50 just east of intersection with Howellsville Road

John C. Underwood, an attorney from New York, settled near here early in the 1850s. Harassed for his antislavery activism and his work on behalf of the Republican Party, he left Virginia in 1856. Pres. Abraham Lincoln appointed him a federal judge for Virginia’s eastern district in 1863. An outspoken advocate of equal rights for African Americans after the Civil War, Underwood was elected president of Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867–68. Among the convention’s 105 members were 24 African Americans. The “Underwood Constitution,” ratified in 1869, granted Black men the right to vote, established a system of free public schools, and secured other democratic reforms.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

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under a mile from where William Gabby lived in the 1760s

what this marker records spans 1777 to 1789, overlapping William Gabby's years here

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John C. Underwood (1809-1873)

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