HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MEDFORD, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, IN 1630, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1855.
Charles Brooks, Ed.

The Kidder family was settled, for several centuries, at Maresfield, in the county of Sussex, some seventy miles from London. It is believed that the only persons now living of that name can be traced back to this common stock. In England, the most distinguished bearer of this name was Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells. He was born in 1633, at East Grinstead, the birthplace of the American emigrant, whose kinsman he was. He was Rector of St. Martin's, London; Prebend of Norwich, 1681; Dean of Peterborough, 1689; and Bishop of Bath, 1691. He was killed, during the great gale of Nov. 27, 1703, by the fall of a chimney on the bishop's palace at Wells, which crushed him and his wife while at prayers. His daughter, Ann, died unmarried; and her only sister, Susanna, married Sir Richard Everard, one of the early governors of South Carolina, and has numerous descendants alive in that State.

The pedigree of the American branch, in the direct line, is: Richard Kidder (1) was living at Maresfield, 1492; his son, Richard (2), d. 1549, leaving eldest son, Richard (3), who d. 1563; m. Margaret----, who d. 1545. This Richard (3) had five sons, of whom John (4), the third, m. Margaret Norman, of Little Horsted, and d. 1599, leaving two sons and several daughters. John (5), oldest son of the last, baptized 1561, m. Joan Beorge, and died in 1616, leaving four sons. James (6), the youngest of these, b. 1595, was the father of James (7), b., 1626, at East Grinstead, who moved to New England, and married Anna Moore, of Camb., N. E., in 1649. This foregoing pedigree is condensed from one in the History of New Ipswich, prepared by Frederick Kidder, a co-editor of that work.