Edward Bean Underhill

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

Born at St. Aldate's, Oxford, on 4 October 1813, he 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.

In 1869 Underhill went to the Cameroons, and settled differences among the Baptist missionaries. In 1870 the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by Rochester University, USA. In 1873 he became president of the Baptist Union; in 1876 he was made treasurer of the Bible Translation Society, and in 1880 treasurer of the Regent's Park Baptist College, where he had been a committee member since 1857; he now also turned to literary pursuits, writing biographies of James Phillippo (1881), Alfred Saker (1884), and John Wenger (1886). In 1886 he was president of the London Baptist Association.

Underhill died at Hampstead on 11 May 1901, and was buried in Hampstead cemetery.

In Gloucestershire Underhill studied ecclesiastical history from the Baptist point of view. In 1845 he founded the Hanserd Knollys Society for the publication of works by early Baptist writers. Of the ten volumes which appeared Underhill edited seven, two with introductions on the Tudor history of the sect.

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