LECTURER AND AUTHOR - Larry Kidder

• HUNTERDON MILITIAMEN AND THEIR FAMILIES AT WAR: "A PEOPLE HARASSED AND EXHAUSTED"
  

  Join Historian and Author William "Larry" Kidder as he describes how, during the colonial period and then the American Revolution, by law, every man between the ages of 16 and 50 in New Jersey was required to enroll in his local militia company. These companies were expected to be a local, emergency defense force, but the nature of the Revolution in New Jersey radically expanded the scope of their duties. As a result, every man, and his family, faced the simultaneous requirements to keep a farm or business going while men of the family were frequently ordered to spend periods of time, often at critical points in the farming year, away from home to defend various parts of the state. The inadequate nature and enforcement of the militia laws meant that those men who responded consistently to militia call outs accepted, along with their families, a “disproportionate burden” among New Jersey citizens who supported the Revolution.
  November 9, 2014

Larry Kidder was born in California and raised in California, Indiana, New York, and New Jersey. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Larry served four years of active duty in the US Navy and was assigned to the US Navy Research and Development Unit, Vietnam and then the destroyer USS Brownson (DD868) home ported in Newport, Rhode Island. In the 1980s he was the lead researcher and writer for the creation of the Admiral Arleigh Burke National Destroyermen’s Museum aboard the destroyer museum ship USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD850) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Larry is a retired high school history teacher who taught for forty years in both public and private schools. He considers teaching to be both his vocation and avocation. During his 32 years of teaching at The Hun School of Princeton he enjoyed designing courses that gave his students the opportunity to develop the thinking, research, and writing skills that result from “doing history” and not just learning facts for a test.

For the past twenty-five years, Larry has been a volunteer at the Howell Living History Farm, part of the Mercer County Park System, in Hopewell, New Jersey. For varying lengths of time he has volunteered as an historian, interpreter, webmaster, and draft horse teamster. This interest led to the writing of his first book, The Pleasant Valley School Story: A Story of Education and Community in Rural New Jersey, which won the 2013 Scholarship and Artistry Award presented by the Country School Association of America. This book tells the story of the local schoolhouse that is now part of the Howell Living History Farm and is also a case study of a rural school in central New Jersey from the early 19th to the mid-20th century. His second book, A People Harassed and Exhausted: The Story of a New Jersey Militia Regiment in the American Revolution, was published in November 2013. In May 2014 he published his third book, Farming Pleasant Valley: 250 Years of Life in Rural Hopewell Township, New Jersey.

Active in historical societies in Ewing, Hopewell, and Lawrence townships, Larry has given a number of talks on local history to a variety of civic groups. He is an avid member of the Association for Living History, Farm, and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM), the Washington's Crossing Roundtable of the American Revolution, and the New Jersey Living History Advisory Council. He recently became an inaugural member of the Advisory Council for Crossroads of the American Revolution and is working with Crossroads on its Meet Your Revolutionary Neighbors project.