2 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
birth of L. M. Underwood, and nearly twenty years 
before G. E. Davenport began the study of ferns. 
He was born on May 2, 1832, in the old Congrega- 
tionalist parsonage in Newton Center, Mass., where his 
father, Rev. James Bates, was pastor for twelve years. 
His mother, Emily Atwood Bates, was a sister of Harriet 
Newell, one of the first missionaries of the American 
Board to India. He prepared for college at Williston 
Seminary, Easthampton, Mass., graduating from Am- 
herst College in 1856, and from Andover Theological 
Seminary in 1860. On October 25, 1860, he married 
Sarah Adams Tobey and shortly thereafter sailed for 
Ceylon, where he remained tbree years as a missionary. 
Compelled by ill health to give up missionary work, 
he returned to America and during the succeeding 
forty years held pastorates in Huntington, Mass., 1866; 
Belpre, Ohio, 1867; Brooklyn, Ohio, 1872; Lowell, 
Mass., 1874; Wolcott, Vt., 1877; Barton Landing (now 
Orleans), Vt., 1880; Williston, Vt., 1883; Randolph, Vt., 
1890; South Royalston, Mass., 1898. 
He was President of the American Fern Society 
during the year 1910. He was a charter member of 
the Vermont Botanical Club and as long as health 
permitted- was a frequent and interested participant 
in the meetings of that society. He was not a volum- 
inous writer, but his occasional. contributions to the 
Fern Bulletin, Frrn JOURNAL, Bulletin of the Vermont 
Botanical Club and other publications all reflect his 
characteristic mental keenness, youthful enthusiasm, 
and generous and kindly spirit. 
For more than sixty years he employed the spare 
moments of a busy life in the study of nature, collecting 
not only plants but minerals, shells and curios from all 
parts of the world. Among the writer’s most vivid — 
recollections of boyhood days is that of sitting in a little 
Vermont church listening with rapt attention to his 
