Lake County Ohio GenWeb

William Bidwell 1767-1831

From A Record of the Revolutionary Soldiers buried in Lake County, Ohio, New Connecticut Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution, Painesville, Ohio, 1902.
Contributed by Helen Bidwell Hoag.

Typed and submitted by Becky Falin, 1996.

William Bidwell, Sr., joined the 8th Conn. Regt. in 1782 under Capt. Joseph Jewett and Col. Jedediah Huntington. His regiment protected the Boston camps and took part at Roxbury.

For nearly eighty years the Bidwell family was identified with the history of Lake Co. Wm. Bidwell with his wife and family of six children, came from their home in Farmington, Conn. in 1820 and settled on the Middle Ridge in Madison, which place was the Bidwell homestead for half a century.

Noah Porter, afterwards President of Yale College, was their pastor and friend in Conn., and he exercised a great influence upon the trend of their lives, for two of the sons Walter and Oliver went back and graduated at Yale, studying for the ministry. Walter H Bidwell edited at different times "The Independent" and "The New York Evangelist." The Eclectic Magazine was founded by him. He was a traveller of note, and his book, "Imperial Courts", was written after his presentation at the courts of Europe.

The other son, Wm. Bidwell, Jr., remained on the farm, and was the main stay of the family, a good husband and father, honorable in all things. Of such stock was Connecticut's contribution to the foundations of good citizenship laid by the pioneers of the Western Reserve.

Two of the grandsons of the Wm. Bidwell, who served in the Revolutionary War, were in the War of the Rebellion serving throughout the entire war.

Dr. Theodore S Bidwell was surgeon of the 125th Regt. of Ohio Infantry, and Walter H Bidwell was a buglar in Battery C, 1st Ohio Light Artillery.

Wm. Bidwell Sr. died in 1831, and sleeps in the Middle Ridge Cemetery in Madison, near his home.