Underhill Burying Ground
Village of Mill Neck, Nassau County, New York
Marker Inscription
Founded by Captain John Underhill. Born Warwickshire, England, 1597. Arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, 1630. Died Matinecock, Long Island, 1672. Erected by Myron C. Taylor in honor of his mother Mary Morgan Underhill Taylor, 1953.
The Story
Captain John Underhill was one of the more colorful figures of early colonial America — an English-born soldier from Warwickshire who crossed the Atlantic in 1630 to the young Massachusetts Bay Colony, then spent his later years on Long Island, dying at Matinecock in 1672. This walled family burying ground marks where the Underhill line first took root in the New World and where generations of the family were laid to rest. The bronze plaque itself is comparatively modern, placed in 1953 by a prominent descendant, industrialist and diplomat Myron C. Taylor, in memory of his mother.
Why it matters
Old family burying grounds like this are the physical roots of America's colonial genealogy — quiet reminders that the nation's earliest English settlers arrived as individuals whose descendants would help populate a continent over the next three centuries.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand at this walled burying ground on Long Island is to reach back to the very first chapter of English America. In 1630, when the man honored here crossed the Atlantic, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was brand new — a raw, precarious foothold of English settlers on the edge of a continent they barely understood.
Long Island in these early colonial decades was a frontier of a different kind: a place where Dutch and English settlement overlapped, where colonists lived alongside — and often in tension with — the Native peoples whose land it had long been. The Matinecock people were among those on this part of the island, and their name is woven into its geography to this day.
Into this unsettled world came a wave of English immigrants seeking land, opportunity, and room to live on their own terms. Some stayed put in the older colonies; others, restless or contentious, pushed on to newer ground. This quiet plot marks where one such family put down roots that would last for centuries.
People & events
The founder of this burying ground was Captain John Underhill, and the plaque lays out the arc of his life in a few spare dates. He was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1597; he arrived in Boston in 1630; and he died at Matinecock, on Long Island, in 1672. Between those dates ran the eventful life of an English-born soldier who cast his lot with the New World and ended his days here.
That he was a captain tells you something about the man and the age. The early colonies were fragile and often embattled, and men with military experience were both valued and, at times, controversial figures. Underhill lived through the turbulent first decades of English settlement and, after years elsewhere, spent his later life on Long Island, where he died and was laid to rest on this ground.
The plaque itself belongs to a much later moment. It was erected in 1953 by Myron C. Taylor — an industrialist and diplomat descended from the family — in honor of his mother, Mary Morgan Underhill Taylor. So the site holds two layers of memory at once: a seventeenth-century founder, and a twentieth-century descendant reaching back across three centuries to honor his lineage and his mother's name.
Its place in the American story
Old family burying grounds like this are the physical roots of America's colonial genealogy. Long before the nation existed, its future population was arriving a shipload at a time — individuals with names and birthplaces, like a man from Warwickshire stepping ashore in 1630 — whose descendants would eventually spread across a continent.
This modest plot compresses that immense story into a single family line. From one English immigrant of the founding generation flowed generations of Americans, and the fact that a prominent twentieth-century descendant chose to mark the spot shows how living those roots remained, even after three hundred years.
It is a reminder that the grand narrative of American settlement is really the sum of countless family stories: an individual crossing an ocean, a foothold established, a name carried forward. The nation's earliest English arrivals were not an abstraction — they were people who lived, fought, farmed, and were buried in ground their families kept sacred.
If you visit
Seek this place out in a spirit of quiet curiosity. A walled family burying ground is an intimate kind of historic site — no grand architecture, just an enclosure that has kept its watch for generations. Read the plaque slowly and let the long span of dates work on you: a birth in Elizabethan-era England, a death on colonial Long Island, and a memorial placed centuries later by a grateful descendant.
Notice the layering of time. The bronze marker is comparatively modern, set in 1953, yet it points back to the 1600s — an act of remembrance reaching across more than three hundred years. Standing there, you are essentially the newest link in a very long chain of people who paused at this spot to remember.
On a tour of the north shore of Long Island, this makes a thoughtful, off-the-beaten-path stop. Come respectfully, keep to the quiet the place asks for, and let it remind you that America's colonial story began with individual travelers whose families never forgot where their roots first took hold.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Underhill
- · Myron C. Taylor
- · Mary Morgan Underhill Taylor
Themes & tags
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