Daniel P. (Daniel Parish) Kidder

Born in western New York in 1815, Daniel Parish Kidder became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church and quickly built a reputation as an energetic worker, teacher, and author. He spent part of the 1830s and early 1840s in Brazil, where he traveled widely, distributed Bibles, and observed local religious and social life at close hand.

Those years abroad shaped some of his best-known writing. He later became especially associated with Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil and, with James Cooley Fletcher, Brazil and the Brazilians, books that helped American readers picture nineteenth-century Brazil through Protestant missionary eyes.

Kidder went on to serve in publishing and academic roles, including work connected with Methodist church literature and with Northwestern University. He died in 1891, leaving behind a large body of religious and educational writing as well as a lasting place in the history of Methodist missions and early English-language writing about Brazil.