UNDERHILL, LOTTIE ELIZABETH. (1864-1931)

UNDERHILL, LOTTIE ELIZABETH., teacher; b. Blackville parish, 4 Apr 1864, d/o William Tryan Underhill and Abigail Coughlan; unmarried; d. Underhill, 17 Oct 1931.

Lottie E. Underhill's father was the first keeper of the post office at the locality in Blackville known as Underhill. After attending local schools she enrolled in the Provincial Normal School and was granted a 2nd class teacher's license in 1882. For the next forty-nine years she taught school, retiring only a few months before her death. Except for two years which she spent in Saskatchewan, she pursued her career in Northumberland County. Her first school was at Elm Tree in Derby parish. She was later in charge of the school at Indiantown. She had been the teacher there for nine years by 1902. She subsequently taught at Underhill and for a lengthy period prior to her retirement, at the Blackville Superior School.

Underhill's classroom work attracted the praise of her inspectors, and phrases such as "does excellent work" and "gives much satisfaction" occur throughout the record. She could produce results "impossible to the average teacher," observed the inspector in 1909. "All her life was devoted to the cause of education," noted the Union Advocate at the time of her death, "and she always did her part in the church and community life." Baptized an Anglican at age twenty, she was later a leading member of the Underhill Baptist Church.