J. L. (John Levi) Underwood

Born on March 27, 1836, in Sumterville, Alabama, John Levi Underwood became a Baptist minister while still young. During the Civil War he served the Confederacy as a chaplain with the 30th Alabama Infantry, an experience that clearly shaped his later public speaking and writing.

After the war, he lived and worked in Georgia, serving churches in places including Bainbridge, Milford, and Red Bluff. A biographical sketch from Mitchell County says he later became judge of the County Court there and was also connected with Bethel College in Russellville, Kentucky, serving for a time as its president.

As an author, Underwood is chiefly known for The Women of the Confederacy, published in 1906 and still the main work associated with his name in library catalogs and Project Gutenberg. He died on June 7, 1907. Because the surviving sources about him are limited and often commemorative, the clearest picture that emerges is of a preacher and Confederate veteran who spent his later years trying to record and defend the Southern memory of the war.