James Harvey Kidd

Born in 1840 and dying in 1913, James Harvey Kidd was a Michigan soldier and memoirist whose writing grew directly out of his service in the American Civil War. Records from the Library of Congress identify him as the author of Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman with Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War, published in Ionia, Michigan, in 1908.

Kidd served with the 6th Michigan Cavalry and later became its colonel; contemporary and memorial sources also describe him as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers. His book is not a distant history but a personal narrative, shaped by his own experiences in the field and by his years under the command of George A. Custer.

That firsthand quality is what makes his work still appealing. Rather than sounding formal or remote, Kidd's writing brings the movement, hardship, and memory of cavalry service close to the reader, making his memoir valuable both as history and as a human account of war.