Enoch Kidder II

Born	1697-12-30 Billerica, MA
Died	1781-01-05 Billerica, MA
Select Board
In Office	1736 - 1743 1747 - 1748 1761 - 1762
Representative to the General Court
In Office	1743 - 1744
Preceded by	Benjamin Tompson
Succeeded by	Benjamin Tompson
Representative to the General Court
In Office	1752 - 1755
Preceded by	William Stickney
Succeeded by	William Stickney
Representative to the General Court
In Office	1758 - 1765
Preceded by	William Stickney
Succeeded by	William Stickney
Father	Enoch Kidder

Enoch Kidder was born in Billerica on December 30, 1697, the son of Enoch Kidder and Mary (Haywood) Kidder and a grandson of Ensign James Kidder, one of the first settlers. For most of his life the town records called him Enoch Kidder Jr.; from the late 1740s he was Captain Kidder. On July 19, 1722 he married Sarah Hunt, daughter of Samuel Hunt. His children, as Hazen and the town records give them, were Sarah (1722/3, died 1729), Samuel (1724), John (1726, died 1748), Enoch (1728, died 1730), Abigail (1730), Solomon (1732), Benjamin (1734), Joseph (1737, died 1738), Sarah (1739), Joseph (1741), Elizabeth (1745) and Rebecca (1753).

He lived near the center of the town. When the Rev. Samuel Ruggles's homestead was inventoried in 1749 it was bounded "westerly on Land of Capt. Enoch Kidder," and in 1760 his land bounded the old Danforth homestead to the south. Henry Hazen, writing of the first James Kidder's house lot south of West Street, where Gardner Parker later lived, noted that "the place has remained in the family, John Parker having married, 1751, Abigail Kidder, dau. of Enoch." In November 1736, when his father settled the North Billerica farm on his brother William, Enoch Jr., "gentleman," sold William for 11 pounds ten acres across the road from Billerica to Winthrop's farm and an acre he had bought of John Rogers Jr., small additions to the farm now remembered as the Enoch Kidder House at 216 High Street.

He was chosen a selectman in 1736 and served every year through 1742, and again in 1747 and 1761. The town sent him to the General Court as its representative fourteen times, in 1743 and 1744, from 1752 to 1755 and from 1758 to 1765. By 1748/9 he signed as Capt. Enoch Kidder, appraising the estate of Samuel Hill 3rd with Capt. Benjamin Shed and William French, and the tax list of 1755 rates "Capt. Enoch" on the west side of the town. In old age he still took the chair: when Billerica answered the Boston committee after the Port Bill, at the town meeting of June 6, 1774, "Captain Enoch Kidder was moderator," and the town resolved that the act closing Boston harbor was "Hostile, Arbitrary & Cruel."

Sarah (Hunt) Kidder died on January 26, 1749/50, aged 46, and on August 8, 1751 he married Mrs. Sarah Bacon, the widow of Josiah Bacon and a daughter of Deacon Joseph Davis. His son Samuel Kidder became a selectman; his daughter Abigail married John Parker, the tanner; his son Solomon, a captain in the Revolution, died at White Plains, New York, on November 20, 1776. His son Joseph graduated at Yale in 1764 and was pastor at Dunstable, New Hampshire, now Nashua, from 1767 until his death in 1818, and his daughter Elizabeth married the Rev. Jonathan Livermore of Wilton, New Hampshire.

On October 14, 1780 Enoch Kidder of Billerica, "Gentleman," made his will. He divided his lands and goods equally among his sons Samuel, Benjamin and Joseph, the heirs of his late daughters Abigail Parker and Sarah Haskell, his daughter Elizabeth Livermore and his daughter Rebecca, leaving nothing to the heirs of Solomon, "I having given him his full portion in my Estate in his Life time." Rebecca, still unmarried, was also to have the household goods, "the Improvement of the west End of my Dwelling house" with the well and garden, a cow, "the Flax which grew on my place this year," half the rye and Indian corn and one of the pigs. He died on January 5, 1781, aged 83 "wanting" five days. The will was proved on March 14, 1781 with Samuel as executor; the appraisers, William Tompson, Joshua Abbot and Jacob Richardson, listed his household goods, cider, pork, corn, flax, two cows and two sheep, sixty-eight acres on the west side of the Concord River and five acres of meadow there, and Samuel's account charged the estate for setting up his gravestones.

Enoch Kidder II

Enoch Kidder II

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