Rank: Lieutenant
Unit: G Co, 2d Cavalry
Date of birth: 31 August 1842
Hometown: Braintree, Vermont
Campaign: Plains Indian War (post Civil War)
Died: 22 July 1867
Age at death: 24
Cause of death: Killed in action
Location of fatality: Beaver Creek, Kansas (Shermanville, Kansas)
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Place of interment: Oakland Cemetery in Saint Paul, Minnesota
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Notes: Kidder Massacre. Second Lieutenant, 2nd US Cavalry. Killed by Indians while delivering a message to Lt. Col. George A. Custer, 7th US Cavalry. His father, Jefferson Parish Kidder, was a judge in the Minnesota Supreme Court. Born in Vermont, he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1858 with his parents, and 1861-1865, fought in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the Civil War, on 18 May 1867, he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant, 2nd Cavalry. On 29 June 1867, at Fort Sedgwick, Kansas, he was given a message to take to Lt. Col. George A. Custer, who was patrolling about50 miles south of the fort. He never arrived. On 12 July, Custer’s patrol found a dead horse with US Army markings. They soon found another dead Army horse, and then the bodies of Kidder and his 10 men – scalped and Decomposing. The men had been ambushed by Sioux and Cheyenne, and fought a running battle south, until forced to make a last stand in a small ravine, where they were killed. The Indians stripped the bodies, scalped them, and filled their bodies with arrows. Kidder’s body was identified by a scrap of black and white flannel shirt which his mother had sent him. The incident became known as the Kidder Massacre. Originally buried in a mass grave at the site, the soldier’s bodies were reburied in 1886 at Fort Leavenworth’s Cemetery, while Lt. Kidder’s body was taken back to Minnesota by his father.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH THE SECOND CAVALRY By Joseph I. Lambert, Major, Second Cavalry
Copyright 1939 Commanding Officer, Second Cavalry, Fort Riley, Kansas Capper Printing Company, Inc.
The most prominent affair in point of losses to the regiment during the year 1867 was the massacre of Second Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder and ten men of Troop M. While en route to join Troop F at Fort Laramie, this officer was sent with ten men and a guide to carry dispatches to Colonel Custer, who was operating between the Platte and the Smoky Hill Rivers. On July 22, the party was surrounded by a large body of Indians near Beaver Creek Kansas, and all the detachment killed. Colonel Custer decided to look for Lieutenant Kidder’s party, and, leaving the forks of the Republican River, turned south, and soon found a broad trail in the uplands. First, coming upon a dead horse, they traveled along a ravine for a short distance, where they discovered a dead soldier and his horse. Turning to the left and crossing a valley, they found where Lieutenant Kidder’s party had camped for the night. Following the trail into the tall grass of the bottom land, one mile from the river, they found the massacred soldiers, the bodies having been scalped, burned, and pierced with arrows. Colonel Custer buried the men on the spot. Lieutenant Kidder’s father came there in February, 1868, and rescued his son’s body for burial at another location.