468 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS first, Sixty-second and Sixty-third Congresses." So much in- formation is required by the publishers of the directory. By analyzing the foregoing, however, we find that he was bom in a border state during the Civil War. When three years old, the family, on account of his mother's health, moved to the then frontier country of Minnesota, and lived there ten years. General Custer and General Hancock were his neigh- bors and Buffalo Bill was one of the influential citizens of the community. Returning to Kentucky he went to Rugby School, after which he took a law course at the University of Virginia. Shortly thereafter he cast his lot in his chosen profession in Birmingham, Alabama, then a town of four thousand inhab- itants. Mr. Underwood's progenitors were nearly all South- erners. Himself a Southerner, by choice, not by profession, he is, above all, an American. In appearance he does not re- semble the conventional Southern congressman, for his attire is rather that of a prosperous president of a Chamber of Commerce. But he has the unaffected, soft, Southern accent in his speech, and occasionally a tell-tale *'you all*' or an
- over yonder proclaims his geographical habitat. When
Oscar Underwood wheels in his chair, looks you squarely in the eye, and, in answer to your query, commences with: **Well, I'll tell you — " you may know you are going to get an exact estimate of the situation. Many a man in Congress, with smaller knowledge of pending legislation than has Oscar W. Underwood, votes with his chief because, as he expresses it,
- Underwood is a safe man to follow."
His father was Eugene Underwood, of Kentucky. His mother before her marriage was Fredericka Virginia Smith, of Petersburg, Virginia. His paternal grandfather was Joseph Rogers Underwood, Kentucky colleague of Henry Clay in the United States Senate, a leader of the Union forces in that state during the Civil War, and a confidential adviser of President Abraham Lincoln. Further analysis and comparison of Mr. Underwood's mod- est autobiography will show that there are but four men, ont of a total of four hundred and thirty-five in the House of Rep- resentatives, who have had longer continuous service than he. ^
