Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Kidd, James Harvey 1913
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Ionia Daily Sentinel, 20 Mar 1913

Gen. J.H. Kidd died Wednesday evening at 6:40 o’clock after an illness of nine
weeks.  He was stricken with apoplexy while at his desk in The Sentinel office
at about 2 o’clock on Saturday afternoon, January 11.  The stroke was brought on
by a condition of hardening of the arteries for several years.  At time during
his last illness Gen. Kidd’s condition improved and was even hopeful, only to be
shattered by successive set-backs which slowly seeped his vitality.  He was
conscious almost to the last and his death had been expected for several days.

Gen. J.H. Kidd was born in the city of Ionia, Feb. 14, 1840, and has been a
resident of this city all his life.  His boyhood days were spent in Ionia where
he attended school and clerked in his father’s store at Kiddville near Belding.
 He entered the normal school at Ypsilanti and graduated there in 1860, entering
the University of Michigan where he remained a student for two years until he
entered the service of the Union in 1862.  A member of the Tappan Guards at the
university he was commissioned captain of Co. E, Sixth Michigan cavalry in 1862
and took his company into camp at Grand Rapids at Camp Kellogg.  May 9, 1863 he
was commissioned major of the Sixth cavalry and May 19, 1864 was made colonel of
the regiment.  He was wounded at the battle of Falling Water, the last of
sixteen battles fought in fifteen days.  He participated with his command in
Kilpatrick’s raid, the battles of the Wilderness campaign, the operations in the
Shenandoah valley and many other battles.  He succeeded Gen. Custer in command
of the Michigan brigade which he commanded at the battle of Cedar Creek.

At the close of the war he was ordered west and commanded the left column in the
Powder river campaign against the Indians, establishing a post and building Fort
Reno on the Powder river in Wyoming.  At the close of the campaign he was
breveted brigadier general of volunteers.

Upon his return he went into the manufacturing business with his father and in
1867 was appointed to be register of the land office at Ionia which position he
held for eight years.

In 1876 he became the first captain of the Ionia Light guard organized in that
year and remained such until 1879, when he was made colonel and brigade
quartermaster of the Michigan National guard when it was organized into a
brigade.  In 1882 and 1883 he was brigade inspector on the staffs of Gen.
Withington and Gen. I. C. Smith and in 1885 was made inspector general under
Gov. R.A. Alger.

In 1887 he served as an aid on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the
G.A.R., Lucius Fairchild.  In 1890 he was made assistant inspector of the G.A.R.
and an aid on the staff of the commander-in-chief, Gen. Alger.  In that 
[missing words]  in Ionia.

In 1895 he was appointed quartermaster general of the Michigan National guard by
Gov. John T. Rich to succeed General Devlin, who had died.  In 1897 he was
appointed secretary of the deep waterways commission with office in Detroit and
for three years was a temporary resident of that city.  In 1901 and 1903 he was
appointed quarter master general on the staff of Gov. A.T. Bliss, and in 1905,
1907 and 1909 served in the same capacity on the staff of Gov. Fred M. Warner.

Gen. Kidd was at one time emminent commander of the Masonic order in Ionia and
was junior warden of the grand commandery, although of late years not a member
of that order.

He was past commander of the Department of Michigan G.A.R. and a member of the
Past Department Commanders’ association of Michigan, and was also made a member
of the committee having in charge the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the
battle Gettysburg, to which he was looking forward with much pleasure.  He was a
member of the committee which arranged for and unveiled the equestrian statue of
Gen. Geo. A. Custer at Monroe.  He was a past commander of Wm. H. Borden Post,
No. 211, G.A.R. of Ionia.

In 1910 he had the honorary degree of LL. D. conferred upon him at the
University of Michigan.

Gen. Kidd has been editor and publisher of the Ionia Sentinel since 1879.  He
has been a life-long republican and always active in republican politics.

His greatest pleasure during the late years of his life was in writing a history
of the Michigan Cavalry brigade in the civil war, and this work was completed
several years ago entitled “Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman, with
Custer’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War.”

He was married Dec. 1871 to Florence S. McConnell, of Ionia, who with one son,
Frederick McConnell Kidd survives.  His sister, Mrs. Sarah J. Spencer, lives in
Washington, and brother Hampton E. Kidd, in Los Angeles, California.

The funeral will be held Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock at the Presbyterian church.

[There is a notation on the obituary card that he was buried in Highland Park
Cemetery.]


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