Kidwell is an ancient English surname which may have been derived from the personal name Cydda in connection with a well or spring. One early American Kidwell in fact signed his name "Cidwell" to an oath of fidelity. England's national flower is the Tudor Rose.
John W. Kidwell was born in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in 1831. He worked briefly as a clerk, as a boatman for at least eleven years, then as a laborer in a paper mill, and later as a bridge keeper.[1][2][3][4][5] Since he lived in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, his boating and bridge keeping careers presumably were on the Potomac River and/or C&O Canal.
There is some question as to whether John was married more than once, owing to the fact that his eldest child, Frances Eugenia, was born in 1854 while he and his wife of 46 years, Mary, were not married until 1855.[6] Since Mary was named as the mother on Frances’ death certificate, it has been suggested that Frances her child born before the marriage. The 1870 census suggests otherwise.[7] In that census, not only was she listed last among the children - in spite of being the eldest child and still a minor with no occupation - but altogether last, after her grandmother in fact. Reporting her last, after all of the younger children and after her grandmother, would be a typical response of a stepparent.
Frances' death certificate should be considered in light of not only the 1870 census but also the fact that, in some cases, a stepparent is named as a parent on a death certificate. One example of such is the case of an unrelated family in Ohio. In that case, the first wife of "John Doe" and mother of his elder children, deserted the family. "John Doe" soon remarried, and the elder children came to regard their stepmother as their mother, to the extent that she was so named on all their death certificates. However, their birth mother is proven by their birth and marriage records.
In addition to all that, Frances, who was listed in the 1870 census by her middle name, Eugenia, was recorded in her own 1876 marriage as Jennie Brooks.[8] Furthermore, she was named as Jennie Kidwell both in John's obituary and on the death certificate for her daughter Julia.[9][10]
Of course, one must wonder why, for her marriage, Frances used a maiden name other than Kidwell. Why did she give it as Brooks, and where did it come from? In the 1850 and 1860 census, respectively, there was a 14- and 24-year-old Eugenia Brooks (born in 1835-36) living in Shepherdstown. In 1850, Eugenia was listed with her parents just three pages prior to John Kidwell. In 1860, she was still single and still living with her father while John was married to Mary, which suggests that Eugenia and John did not marry. In any case, Frances’s middle name being Eugenia, considered along with the 1870 census and the fact that stepparents are sometimes named as parents on death certificates, points to Eugenia Brooks being the mother of Frances Eugenia "Jennie" Kidwell, eldest child of John. Unfortunately, Frances' year of birth was the first year that birth records were kept in Jefferson County, and registration of her birth might simply have been overlooked.
John Kidwell, laborer, died of paralysis on March 28, 1902 at the age of 70. While his home was in Shepherdstown, he died in Hagerstown while visiting his daughter Pinkney, wife of Thomas Pierce.[11] His obituary reads ...
John W. Kidwell was buried beside Mary at Shepherdstown's Elmwood Cemetery.[12]
John was mistakenly entered in the West Virginia Register of Deaths for the year ending 31 December 1901, which was compiled not as deaths occurred but sometime after the end of the year. That is apparent from the facts that all the 1901 deaths appear in strict alphabetic order and December 1901 deaths often appear on the same page as January 1901 deaths. (Note December deaths listed 3 lines before and 7 lines after John's March death.) Clearly, John's death certificate was mistakenly lumped in with those for deaths that occurred in 1901.[13]
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