He came from England before 1640.  With thirty-one others he signed the town orders of Woburn, December 18, 1640.  He had been living in Charlestown, of which Woburn was then a part, and where he was a taxpayer in 1645.  Francis Kendall married; December 24, 1644, Mary Tidd, daughter of John Tidd.  In the record he is called Francis Kendall, alias Miles.  There are several explanations of this record.  It was common with emigrants to America to take assumed names to avoid vexatious laws, and there is a tradition that Kendall left England against the wishes of his family, using the name of Miles until he was settled in this country.  His brother, Thomas seems not to have used any other name.  Francis Kendall was admitted a freeman, May 10, 1648.  Sewall says of him: "He was a gentleman of great respectability and influence in the place of his residence."  He served the town at different times for eighteen years as selectman, and on important committees such as those for distributing grants to the pioneers, and on building the meeting house.  He was tything man in 1676. 
He was not entirely in accord with the Puritan church, and was fined for some infraction of church rules about infant baptism or attendance at communion or attending meetings of the Anabaptists.  He was a miller by trade and owned a corn mill, which he left to his sons, Samuel and John.  This corn mill, at Woburn, has been in the possession of the family down to the present time.  The mill now, or lately on the Kendall place, is one built by Samuel Kendall soon after 1700 and is some distance from the location of the first mill.
Source:  Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs relating to the Families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - W.R. Cutter -pp. 1125-1130.