Biography: Winnebago County, Wisconsin: Samuel T. KIDDER ************************************************************************ Submitted by Kathy Grace, December 2007 © All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ************************************************************************ Transcribed from Lawson, Publius V. History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: its cities, towns, resources people. Chicago: C.F. Cooper and Company, 1908. v.2 p.764- 765 Rev. Samuel T. Kidder was born in Warsaw, New York, December 27, 1848. His father was a Congregational pastor before him. In 1873 he graduated from Beloit College and then studied at Yale Divinity School and afterward in Andover Theological Seminary, where his father had been a student. Here he graduated in 1877 and was ordained in Saugus, Massachusetts, April 17, 1878. He served as pastor at Winnetka, Illinois, until 1885, and then at Fond du Lac until 1892, after which he spent a year as principal of the Academy at Ashland, when he came to Menasha. Here he took high rank among the colony of ministers and interested himself in civic morality. In 1898 he accepted a call to Ripon to be near the college for the education of his family of five bright children and became a trustee of the college. He is in charge of the church at Springfield, Missouri, since 1906, where his daughter is professor of philosophy in the college located there. Rev. Kidder was a broad student, well versed in many subjects, and took a lively interest in social and historic events, being secretary of the Historical Society of Ripon, which he helped to organize, and also a member of the Wisconsin Archaeological Society, a subject in which he manifested a deep interest, making many excursions throughout the state in research work and furnishing valuable plans of mound groups.