The following is a brief biography of a great Shasta County pioneer.
The Reverend William Samuel Kidder was born on November 15, 1834 to John Kidder and Mary Ann (Payne) Kidder in Charing, Kent County, England. He is my paternal great-great-great grandfather and he was eight years old when his family emigrated from England to the United States in 1842. They settled at Pittsfield, Otsego County, New York. At the age of twenty-four William leaving his family, departed Pittsfield and ventured west to California. He eventually settled at French Gulch in 1858. In 1859 a school opened in Whiskeytown and he was hired as the teacher; this is where Kidder became affiliated with the Whiskey Creek Baptist Church. Kidder was ordained as a Baptist minister in Sacramento on September 9, 1860.
On August 2, 1861, Kidder was appointed Post Master at French Gulch. Between 1863 and 1873 (with the exception of his Civil War service) he was employed as a miner by the Washington Quartz Mining Company at the Washington mine in French Gulch, part of the French Gulch mining district. The Washington mine was the first gold mine in Shasta County having been located in 1852, by pioneers John Souter and John Syme. Syme was the superintendent at the mine when Kidder was employed there.
Kidder enlisted into the United States Army on November 10, 1864 from Marysville where he served as a soldier in the Civil War with Company I., of the Seventh California Infantry, fighting for the Union army. During the war, William’s unit was directed to Arizona where they were ordered to protect military forts. He was honorably discharged in March of 1866 at Presidia and eventually returned to French Gulch.
A year later on December 5, 1867, William Kidder was married to Mary Elizabeth McFarlin (1849-1938) by the Reverend S.N. Newkirk, in a double wedding ceremony with the bride’s sister, Martha Ann McFarlin, marrying Thomas Burton Smith at Eagle Creek (now Ono). It was Kidder who performed the Smith wedding that day. Mary was one of ten children born to George McFarlin and Martha Yelland (Miller) McFarlin, pioneers of Shasta County, who arrived at Texas Springs with their family in 1860 from District 24, Grant County, Wisconsin. They are my paternal great-great-great-great grandparents.
L-R: The Reverend William S. Kidder and his wife Mary E. (McFarlin) Kidder. From the collection of Jeremy M. Tuggle.
At the age of 35, William appears on the 1870 U.S. Census, living in French Gulch and working as a miner. His wife was listed at age 20, as a common house wife, and in the interim one child was added to the household. During the 1880s, Kidder petitioned for a homestead in the Eagle Creek area. The petition was granted and the family moved from French Gulch to Eagle Creek. This is where he began to farm, but he continued preaching and mining to support his family. The Reverend William S. Kidder was elected as the Shasta County Assessor in 1880 and he served through 1886.
In 1883, the people of Eagle Creek were getting tired of traveling five miles to the town of Igo to receive their mail. The residents met and submitted a petition for a new post office to the Postal Service headquarters at Washington D.C. The names that were offered on the petition were Eaglesville, Eagle Creek and Orofino (meaning fine gold in Spanish). The names Eaglesville and Eagle Creek were turned down by officials in Washington D.C., because they conflicted with names used elsewhere in California. The name Orofino was also rejected because there was a town in Siskiyou County with that name.
The petition was granted for a post office, however, the local residents were furious about the objections as new name would first have to be selected and approved in order to establish a post office. Local residents asked the Reverend William Samuel Kidder to suggest a name for this burgeoning farming and mining area. Kidder suggested the name Ono, he picked the name from the bible in Neahmiah 6:2 "as we meet together on the plains of Ono." The name Ono derives from a town in Jerusalem, formerly called Ono, now known as Auna. On April 16, 1883, a post office was established by the United States Postal Service called Ono. William appointed his brother-in-law William Miller McFarlin, to be the first Post Master of Ono.
Kidder founded numerous churches in northern California including the First Baptist Church of Red Bluff in 1860 and the First Baptist Church of Redding in 1887, becoming the first pastor at both churches. Kidder enjoyed God’s calling and traveled to different Baptist churches and schools in the area to preach the word of God. He preached at places with names like Copper City, Excelsior, Bald Hills, Gas Point, Kimball Plains, Pickney, Aiken Gulch, Watson Gulch, Millville and Eagle Creek (Ono). He performed many marriages throughout his lifetime. The Fellowship Hall of the First Baptist Church in Redding, was dedicated as Kidder Hall in April of 2007 in memory of Kidder by church officials.
In 1887, Kidder purchased the Tellurium Restaurant on Market Street in Redding. This restaurant was open at all hours of the day and it offered a good table setting at twenty-five cents a meal. Eventually moving his restaurant into a building on the corner of Market and Butte Streets in Redding, owned by John O. Welsh. On November 4, 1890, Thomas B. Smith was elected as Shasta County assessor and he appointed his brother-in-law, the Reverend Kidder to be his deputy assessor, a position in which Kidder had previous experience. Kidder acted as one of his deputy assessors until 1894.
The Reverend William S. Kidder died on March 16, 1911 at his home in Ono. He was 76 years old. The Reverend William S. Kidder and his wife had a total of eight children, which included seven daughters and one son. All of his children were educated at the Ono Schoolhouse. The pioneer Baptist minister was labeled as the “the most respected man in western Shasta County” by the Courier-Free Press newspaper of Redding, at the time of his death. There is simply not enough room to name all of Reverend Kidder’s accomplishments and achievements during his lifetime. Local historians, and his descendants, continue to chronicle his life story which can be found in numerous periodicals and books at the Shasta Historical Society and the Redding Library. His wife Mary Elizabeth (McFarlin) Kidder survived him and died in Redding on January 9, 1938. She was 88 years old. Both of them are buried at the Ono Cemetery in Ono. Many of their descendants still live in Shasta County, and like me, they are proud of their pioneer heritage.
(This article was written by Jeremy M. Tuggle.)
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