author
Frederic Kidder
1804–1885
A self-educated New England antiquarian, he turned a lifelong interest in early American history into detailed books on colonial events, military campaigns, and the past of Boston and Maine. His work has the patient, documentary feel of someone determined to preserve stories before they disappeared.
2 Audiobooks
The Popham Colony : a discussion of its historical claims, with a bibliography of the subject
by William Frederick Poole, Edward Ballard, Frederic Kidder
The Abenaki Indians Their Treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a Vocabulary
by Frederic Kidder
About the author
Born in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, in 1804, Frederic Kidder became known as an American writer and antiquarian. He was largely self-educated and spent parts of his working life in business in Boston and New York before devoting serious attention to historical research and writing.
Kidder wrote closely documented studies of early American and New England history, including works on the Boston Massacre, the Popham Colony, Captain John Lovewell, and Revolutionary War subjects in New Hampshire, Maine, and Nova Scotia. His reputation rests on that careful antiquarian spirit: he gathered records, traced local traditions, and helped preserve episodes of regional history that might otherwise have faded from view.
He died in 1885 in Massachusetts. Readers drawn to nineteenth-century historical writing may enjoy him for the same reason scholars still notice him: his books reflect an earnest effort to collect evidence and make the early history of New England vivid and memorable.