Underwood, Olin C.

Olin C. Underwood was born in McHenry County, Illinois, on November 27, 1855, to the Honorable James Underwood and Melissa Gardner. He moved with his family to Iowa in 1870, where he later served as a township assessor in Palo Alto County for seven years and worked for twenty years as a locomotive engineer on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. He married Laura C. Cook, a native of Iowa, in 1881, and together they raised nine children: Bessie C., Minnie E., Byron C., Albert E., Mildred E., Esther L., William Otis, Harold C., and Luella.

After relocating to Fresno County, California, Olin became a well-known figure in Reedley, serving for ten years as the janitor of the West Side Grammar School while working as an orchard foreman and warehouse receiver. He also developed twenty-five acres of stubble field into productive ranch land, retaining fifteen acres near Reedley after selling portions to his son Byron C. and another party. A member of the Highland Lodge, A. F. and A. M., in Ruthven, Iowa, and a loyal Republican, he took great pride in the military service of his four sons—Byron, Albert, William Otis, and Harold—during the World War.