Robert Kitchel was born in England in 1604 and died at Newark NJ in 1672. He was married to Margaret Sheaffe, the daughter of Edmund Sheaffe of Cranbrook, Kent, England. She died in 1682.

Robert Kitchel left England on April 26, 1639 in company with a band of Puritan refugees led by Rev. Henry Whitfield. They arrived in the first vessel that anchored in the harbor of Quinnipiac, now New Haven, CT. While yet on shipboard the company bound themselves by a "Plantation Covenant" to  "sit down and join themselves together in one certain plantation."  They settled at Guilford in order to be outside the jurisdiction of the Connecticut Colony which they suspected of serious deflection for Puritan principles.

Robert Kitchel was a leader in the community. His name stands first among signatures to the "Plantation Covenant." The Guilford settlers were generally men of character, culture and substance. Robert Kitchel was representative from Guilford at New Haven In 1650, 1656, 1661, 1662 and 1663.

Abraham, born August 26, 1736 and his wife, Rebecca Kitchel, lived at Rockaway, but he is buried at Parsippany where he had moved in 1792. He was prominent in church work, a leader in the community and a staunch patriot during the Revolution. Although not an enlisted soldier, he served on the Committee of Safety.

The "Rockaway, N,J. Records" compiled by Rev. Joseph Farrand Tuttle give the following mention of Abraham kitchel: "In April 1773, Abraham Kitchel is mentioned as moderator of the parish meeting, in which capacity and as trustee, Committeeman and collector, he frequently served the parish. His brother, Aaron kitchel, was one of the most intelligent men in the county, taking a prominent part in the Revolution and frequently serving the state in the Provincial and Continental Congress. Abraham was a man of better education that was common in his day among men who had not been trained in the higher schools and colleges.

"From the time he came into the parish until he left in the fall of 1792 he was a leading man, whose firmness sometimes mounted to obstinacy. he was a man of some humor, great independence and physical strength. He was in the employ of Benjamin Cooper at Hibernia with his team. On one occasion happening to meet Cooper by a very bad mud hole he asked him to have it fixed, Cooper gave him a rough answer, and Kitchel seized him and threw him into the hole saying, "Well, then I will need to mend it with you." Having neither poverty or riches, he was liberal according to his means and when he removed, he left two sons, James and Ford to assist in carrying the burden of the church, a task they were not loath to perform for many years."

He first lived in a log house near the old stone house, not standing now, but occupied many years by his son, James Kitchel. In 1776 James was in the army and was brought to Hanover sick of camp distemper. His mother, Charity Ford, in nursing him caught the disease and died October 7, 1776, the very day that the Kitchel house was raised.

In 1858 he traded for a farm adjoining Palmyra, Iowa where he lived until his death, March 30, 1860 and was an active church member of the Methodist Church and a man of highest character.