Edward Bean Underhill

Edward Bean Underhill (1813–1901) was an English missionary secretary, known as a Baptist historian and biographer.

Life Born at St. Aldate's, Oxford, on 4 October 1813, Underhill was one of seven children of Michael Underhill, a grocer in Oxford, by his wife Eleanor Scrivener. After schooling in Oxford by John Howard Hinton, Underhill went into business as a grocer in Beaumont Street, Oxford, from 1828 until 1843. His wife suffered from poor health, and he then moved to Avening, near Stroud, Gloucestershire.

In 1848 Underhill became proprietor and editor of the Baptist Record, to which he contributed historical papers. After the closure of the magazine in June 1849, Underhill became joint secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society (July 1849). He was sole secretary from 1869 to 1876, and honorary secretary from 1876 until death. The society's work expanded in the period. He visited the missionary centres of the society, and was in India and Ceylon from October 1854 to February 1857. He gave evidence to the committee of the House of Commons on the affairs of India in 1859. Under the title of The Exposition of Abuses in Jamaica he published in 1865 a letter, exposing cruelties of the planters, which he had addressed to Edward Cardwell, the colonial secretary (5 January 1865). A rising of the natives followed in October. The governor, Edward John Eyre denounced Underhill's pamphlet as an incitement to sedition, and with his supporters attacked Underhill as inaccurate. and The Divine Legation of Paul the Apostle (1889). He contributed an article on Bible translation to the Baptist Missionary Society's centenary volume, 1892.

Family Underhill married three times:

in 1836 to Sophia Ann, daughter of Samuel Collingwood, printer to Oxford University, by whom he had three daughters; she died on 25 October 1850; on 17 November 1852 to Emily, eldest daughter of John Lee Benham of London; she died in the Cameroons on 22 December 1869; on 17 July 1872 to Mary, daughter of Alfred Pigeon, distiller, of London. She survived Underhill till 2 December 1908.