Amos Kendall was born in Dunstable, Massachusetts, on August 16, 1787. He was the sixth child of Zebedee and Molly (Dakin) Kendall. The Kendalls were English Americans who emigrated to Massachusetts from England in 1640. The Kendalls were prominent landowners in the town of Dunstable, and quite numerous. Members of his family owned the tavern where elections and town meetings were held, were elected town selectmen, and served on the committee of correspondence (the shadow-government which mobilized anti-British sentiment prior to the American Revolutionary War). Molly Kendall gave birth to six more children after Amos, but only two of them lived past the age of six.