George Washington Baird

(16 December 1821 - 12 Mar 1876)

 

 

George seems to have been raised by his grandmother Elizabeth Ferguson and her children in Springfield, Tennessee.  The 1830 census for Robertson County shows John W. Ferguson with his family, mother, brothers and sisters all in one household, with one extra male under the age of ten who is probably George W. Baird and a second male 40-50 who may be his father .  In 1840, Elizabeth Ferguson is shown as head of her own household with two older females (evidently her spinster daughters Mary and Nancy) and one male age 15-20 who is probably George.  In the school census of 1839, George is in John W. Ferguson’s household.

 

When his grandmother, Elizabeth Ferguson, died in 1845, George W. Baird was appointed administrator of her estate[1].   The final settlement was recorded in Robertson County in August 1849[2].  George, as the only heir of his mother, along with Elizabeth Ferguson's children divided the estate, with George receiving a town lot in Springfield. 

 

He married Mary Elizabeth Traughber, daughter of William Traughber and Permilia Gorham.  The date was recorded as 28 October 1847 according to the family bible of one of his granddaughters.[3]  The marriage return by Thomas Farmer, J.P. in Robertson County, however, is dated 7 October 1847.[4]

 

Although reasonably well educated, it’s not certain what career George pursued early in his life.  Shortly after his marriage, on 3 May 1848, he purchased two wagons, a bay horse and household furniture in Springfield.  He seems to have used the wagons to transport people leaving the area on at least one occasion.  We have two letters he wrote on the trail in late 1848 to his wife back in Springfield.[5]  The first is dated 19 November 1848 from Lawrence, Alabama, and the second is dated 23 November 1848 from Buzzard Roost, Alabama.  They indicate he delivered a Mrs. Beaumont to northwestern Alabama and picked up return passengers for Springfield.  We also have a return letter from Mary dated 31 November 1848, which seems to indicate he was renting out a horse from a stable in Springfield.  It is interesting that both George and Mary signed these letters as "Baird".  George seems to have been the first in the family to use that spelling consistently.

 

Within a few months, George evidently decided to join his in-laws in Dallas.  On 17 August 1849 George sold his inherited town lot in Springfield to his aunt, Miss Mary Ferguson[6].  Within two months, George and Mary were living in Dallas. 

 

Dallas was quite a small town at this time, and northern Texas still wild country.  The first recorded expedition to the Dallas area had been in 1837, when an expedition of 29 men camped on the Trinity River, were attacked by Indians, and retreated south.  In 1841 the Republic of Texas authorized the Texas Emigration and Land Company, also known as W. S. Peters and Associates (the “Peters Colony”), to recruit settlers for a 1,300-square-mile area from present Dallas County northward to the Red River.  They advertised widely for settlers through the United States and Europe.  John Neely Bryan, the first settler, arrived alone in 1841, followed by several families early in 1842.  By late that year, deeds were referring to the area as “Dallas”.[7]  John Neely Bryan later received a grant of 640 acres and personally laid out the original town on his land.  Texas became a state in 1845 and its first Legislature made Dallas a county in 1846.  William Traughber (q.v.), Mary Baird’s father, arrived in 1846 and opened the town's second saloon.  He evidently left Mary in Tennessee, or she returned there to marry George.

 

On 25 October 1849, Mary E. Baird bought two lots in town near the “square” [8] from John Neely Bryan[9].  George evidently was already in the habit of keeping his property in his wife’s name.  Over the next few years George and Mary acquired nearly all of that block, which was bounded by Elm, Pacific, Houston, and Broadway (a street that no longer exists).  The Baird lots are, indirectly, quite famous.  The Bairds built their house on Lots 7 and 8, the original purchase, which together comprised the southeastern quarter of the block.  The house faced onto Houston, as the address shown in later city directories was 16 South Houston Street.  George's widow sold the property to the railroad in 1882.  After changing hands a few times, the property was acquired in 1894 by the Rock Island Plow Company, which tore down the Baird house and built a large brick building on the site which, in 1963, was known as the Texas Book Repository.  (See the separate file for an interesting sidebar on this famous building and a recent archeological excavation of the other Baird lots on the block.)

 

John Henry Brown's 1892 history lists the first pioneers of Dallas, among them “Geo. W. Baird 1849; married Mary E. Traughber.” [10]  George was listed in the 1850 census of Dallas, taken November 4, with Mary E. and their first child, Geo. R. (age 6 months).  His occupation was given as "tailor".  The records of the Tannehill Masonic Lodge of Dallas show he had been initiated into the Masons in Tennessee in 1847 and joined the Tannehill Lodge on 23 February 1850.  He also appears in the county records as a notary and justice of the peace as early as 1851.  He served as a justice on and off for most of his life.

 

In February 1850 Mary's father died intestate in Dallas.  George W. Baird petitioned to be named administrator, arguing that Traughber's other children were non-residents of Texas and, since Traughber had done enough for them in his lifetime, his wife Mary E. Baird should inherit the whole estate[11].  George was named administrator, but the court did not buy his argument.  Both William Traughber Jr. and  Lydia Traughber Gorham received portions of the estate, with the bulk going to Mary in the form of a negro boy named Adam and four lots in downtown Dallas, two in Block 10.  George and Mary already owned part of the block; this gave them title to nearly all of it.

 

Until 1856, the Bairds apparently lived at Record Crossing, on the river just south of what is now Love Field.   They then moved into town and, on their original lot, built the house George would live in for the rest of his life.  The site at 16 South Houston was prime real estate at the time, nearly in the center of town.  The other occupant of the block was Maxime Guillot, a French immigrant who established a carriage factory in Dallas in 1852.[12]

 

Dallas was incorporated as a city in 1856 and held its first election on 25 April 1856.  George W. Baird was elected one of six aldermen, with 57 votes.   He was reelected at least once.  In 1859 he was elected Marshall of Dallas with 37 of the 39 votes cast, and lost the election for Mayor the following year by just one vote.[13]  By this time George had gone into the grocery business.  Both the 1860 and 1870 censuses list his occupation as “grocer”, but he was clearly in that business a year or so earlier.  The 24 August 1859 edition of the Dallas Weekly Herald carried this peculiar advertisement:

 

            That old saying "Wait for the wagon" has become obsolete, for let it be known that the wagon has come and has brought to the undersigned one of the most complete assortment of groceries that ever came to Dallas, among which may be found coffee, sugar, cigars, tobacco, soda,  pepper, oysters, sardines, pickles, starch, soap, Whybrown celebrated pie fruits.  These fruits put up in air tight cans, hermetically sealed, and are as fresh as when first taken from the trees.  Also pure liquors of all kinds.  Family Grocers for the lame, the sick, the halt, and those that can't see as well as all that are dry and thirsty.  George W. Baird.

 

Meanwhile, back in Springfield, George Baird and John W. Ferguson Jr. were successfully sued over a debt by M. D. Crockett in 1855.[14]  Since George had sold his property in Tennessee, Ferguson was forced to pay the debt.   Four years later, Ferguson found a way to recover from George Baird.  On 26 November 1859 John W. Ferguson Jr. filed suit in Robertson County against George and Mary Baird to recover the debt of $145.[15]  The suit stated “...Baird was in this County October last to see his aunt [Mary Ferguson] and to get her to remove with him to the State of Texas, which she did, but before removing...said Baird procured her...to make a deed for two Town lots in Springfield...to his wife Mary.”  Ferguson charged that George had paid for the lots himself but had the deed made out to his wife to avoid attachment, therefore the property should be seized to pay the debt.  The Robertson County deed books confirm this.  There is a deed from Mary Ferguson to Mary E. Baird for the two lots, town lots number 37 and 39, dated 18 October 1859.[16]  The court awarded John W. Ferguson a portion of one lot.

 

George and Mary are in the 1860 census of Dallas, with the three oldest children in the household.  His real estate value had climbed form $200 in 1850 to $1,700, and he was shown with $3,500 of personal property.

 

Another original alderman was James Latimer, the founder of the Dallas Weekly Herald.   There are numerous articles in that newspaper mentioning George Baird.  In the 13 March 1861 edition is a report by the mayor which includes the statement:  “Taxes collected by the former Assessor and Collector, Geo. W. Baird”.  George evidently gave up the office when he joined the Army the month before.

 

Despite being over forty at the time, George apparently did join the confederate army.  The Texas Confederate Index contains an entry for him showing he enlisted as a private in February 1861 in Captain John J. Good's Company of the Texas Artillery, Dallas Light Artillery.  It shows he brought his own horse but was issued one Navy six shooter, one rifle, two 12-pound mountain howitzers, and 40 artillery sabers by the Army.  This is a peculiar record for a private, but perhaps he was acting in a quartermaster capacity.  The official records of this unit do not begin until June of 1861, when it consisted of 50 men drawn from the cream of Dallas society.  The unit fought in Arkansas in late 1861 and early 1862. The summer and fall of 1862, they fought in the Corinth Campaign in Mississippi.  It is not clear whether George served in these campaigns or not.  It appears he did not serve more than a year, since on 19 May 1862 he was elected a justice in Dallas. 

 

His obituary (see below) in the Dallas newspaper indicates he suffered some disability, perhaps early in the war, and that he served as a commissary officer in Dallas.  The Dallas area, as the chief food-producing center for North Texas, was chosen by the Confederate government as the site for the general quartermaster's and commissary headquarters for the army of the Trans-­Mississippi Department.  George was clearly residing in Dallas from 1862 through the war, and holding public office.  The Dallas Times Herald reported on 4 October 1862 that he was the “authorized agent” to receive clothing for the 31^st Texas Infantry.[17]

 

The only official records of Dallas during the Civil War are the notes of John Crockett, who in 1887 said he acted as mayor but couldn't remember exactly how he got the job.  [He was elected mayor in the same 1859 election in which George was elected Marshall, reelected two years later, and elected again in 1865.  From 1862-1865 there was technically no mayor, Dallas being governed by a military governor.]  His notes contain only a few entries for the period of the war, two of which mention George Baird:                                     

 

December 18, 1865.  Council met.  Present were Aldermen Charles Newton, W. H. Thomas, A.  W. Morton, George W. Baird, ___ Johnson, and J. S. Ballard. 

 

            Feb. 9, 1866.  Fined George W. Baird $5 for assault on M. Guillot.

 

The 1870 census shows George and Mary, and all their children, at home.[18]  George was listed as a “grocer” with $3,000 in real estate and $500 in personal property.  His oldest son, George Rolando Baird, is in the household (age 20) as a “clerk in store” with $1,000 in real estate and $2,000 of personal property.  A few months after the census was taken, on 1 August 1870, George sold the stock in his grocery store “situated in the Town of Dallas on Jefferson Street one door north of the Public Square” to his eldest son, George Rolando Baird, and apparently retired from the business.[19] 

 

The first Dallas city directory, issued in 1875, shows George W. Baird running a boardinghouse at his home at 16 South Houston St.  The 1870 census had shown boarders named Peter Semsen, a stonemason, and  John Hanna, a lawyer.  Three female blacks are in the household as domestic servants.

 

The 24 July 1875 edition of the Dallas Weekly Herald reports a meeting on 13 July 1875 to organize a group called the Pioneers of Dallas County.  There were 112 charter members, two of whom were George and Mary Baird.  George was listed 51st:  G. W. Baird came to the County Oct. 20, 1849.  Mary was listed 52nd:  Mary E. Baird came to the County May 1846 (probably meaning the date her father arrived). 

 

George died 12 March 1876 in Dallas, according to the family Bible.  His burial place is a mystery.  There are no Bairds in any of the old cemeteries in Dallas.  The Dallas Weekly Herald issue of 14 March 1876 carried the following front page story under the headline "Another Old Citizen Gone":

 

            Our community was startled yesterday morning by the announcement that George W. Baird was dead.  On inquiry, it was ascertained that Mr. Baird died suddenly at his residence on Sunday at 12 o'clock, of typhoid fever.  In the prime of his life, his face was familiar to all of our citizens, old and new, for he was a genial,  affable, and it might be said, winning man.  By which it is meant that George Baird was one of those sons of nature whose faces indicate their true character.  The assertion may be ventured that he had not on earth, and never had, a personal enemy.  His impulses were ever overflowing with generosity to all his fellows.  Mistakes he may have made, it is true, but willful wrong he never committed.

 

            Mr. Baird was born and raised in Robertson County, Tennessee; married to Miss Elizabeth Traughber in 1847; moved to Texas in 1849, and was in the fifty-sixth year of his age at the date of his death.  His home has ever been, since landing in Texas, in the town and city of Dallas.  He has been one of us from our infantile state, with all the trials of a frontier village, to our present condition as a flourishing city of fifteen thousand inhabitants.  But few men have such a record ... Mr. Baird was in the prime of his life.  But three days since he was on our streets in apparent health, now he sleeps in his silent tomb.  He leaves a widow, two married children and three younger sons, besides other kindred who have the sympathies of this entire community.  His eldest son, Rolando, is absent in Arkansas, but was telegraphed to and was expected home last night…We may add,  and do so with pleasure, that from its foundation twenty-six years ago to the present time, Mr. Baird was a continuous subscriber to The Herald…

 

On 19 April 1878 Alzeda Persise, a sister of Mary and Nancy Ferguson and an aunt of George Baird, filed suit back in Robertson County, Tennessee against Mary Baird and her children.  Mary Baird had bought two lots in Springfield from George’s aunt Mary Ferguson in 1859, evidently as part of George’s attempt to lock up his inheritance.  As Alzeda Persise claimed in her suit, Mary Ferguson had conveyed the lots to her sister Nancy Ferguson in 1851 and therefore no longer had title when she deeded them to Mary Baird.  Because Nancy Ferguson died intestate, single and childless in 1855, the lots should have been in her estate and distributed equally among her brothers and sisters.  Alzeda Ferguson argued that, since both Nancy and Mary Ferguson were now dead, the lots should be sold and the proceeds distributed equally among Mary’s siblings or their heirs.  The court agreed and so ordered on 23 May 1878.[20]  The record states George Baird was a nephew of Nancy and Mary, therefore his children were entitled to a full share of both estates.  The lots were sold later that year and the $350 proceeds distributed among the heirs.

 

Mary continued to live at 16 South Houston, and operated the boarding house there, for another six years.  She is shown in the 1880 census as residing at North Elm Street with her married daughter and three younger sons in the household.  Her oldest son George R. Baird was by then living in his own home.  On 15 August 1882 she bought a house at 320 Masten St. (now called St. Paul St.).  She is listed at that address in the 1884 city directory.  She died 19 January 1890 in Dallas. There is no settlement of her estate in the Dallas records.

 

Children of George W. and Mary E. Baird, from the family Bible and other sources were the following.  Only two of the children, and only one of the five sons, married and had children.

 

 

1.      George Rolando Baird (28 November 1849 - 25 January 1895)   See next page.

2.      Parmilia Baird (c1852 – died in infancy)  The Baird-Brown-Fowler Bible lists “Parmilia” (Permelia?) between George and Mary Emma in the list of George Baird's children, without dates.  It seems likely she was the first daughter, named after Mary's mother, and died in infancy.  She is not shown in any census.  I would note that the 1854 letter from Mary Ferguson to George Baird mentions only one child, a further confirmation that this daughter died in infancy.

3.      Mary Emma Baird  (2 November 1856 - 9 April 1950)  She married William Cass Brown in Dallas on 9 September 1873.  They had one child, Georgia Lee Brown (9 July 1874 - 23 April 1951).  According to Georgia’s family bible, a second daughter, Nellie, died hours after being born on 24 June 1876.  (The 1900 census confirms that Emma had two children. only one living.)   In the 1880 census, Mary Emma and her daughter were living with her mother, Mary E. Baird, William Cass Brown being elsewhere.  The Bible shows William Cass Brown's birth date as 5 December 1848.  There is no death date entered, nor any other clue as to what became of him.  Mary Emma is mentioned in the 12 October 1872 edition of the Dallas Time Herald as being “badly scratched and bruised” by a frightened horse at the Dallas Fairgrounds.[21]  Emma continued to live in Dallas and is listed there in censuses through 1930 (the latest available at this writing.)  In 1900 Emma is head of a household consisting of her daughter and grandson, and her brother William Guess Baird.  In 1930, the same three people are in the household, her daughter now widowed.

Mary Emma won a Dallas Times Herald contest in 1949 as the oldest pioneer in Dallas.  On Sunday August 28, the paper published a special issue devoted to the history of Dallas. Emma's photograph and story are on page one.  The story says: 

Mrs. Mary Emma Brown, a Dallas County resident since her birth Nov. 2, 1856, has lived in the County longer than any of the 300 citizens nominated for the Times Herald Pioneer Contest.   She will receive $100 as first award in the search conducted with the preparation of the Herald's special edition.  Mrs. Brown's father was George. W. Baird, who was a partner of Capt. Record in operation of a grist mill at the location now known as Record's Crossing.  The Baird family was living at the mill when daughter Mary Emma was  born.  In a short time Baird moved into town and operated a grocery store on the square.  During the War Between the States Baird's physical disability, coupled with his grocery experience led him to his appointment as commissary officer for the Confederates.  The daughter was courted in the family home, at Elm and Houston, by a young Virginian, W. C. Brown who had come to Texas with the Sanger brothers.  After their marriage Brown was a broker for tallow and hides.  Now bedridden and critically ill as a result of a broken hip suffered last January, Mrs. Brown lives with her daughter Mrs. Georgie Fowler. 

They had two children, Georgia Lee Brown, and Nellie Brown (who died in infancy).  The daughter, Georgia Lee Brown, married William Robert Fowler on 1 May 1891 in Dallas County.[22]   A son, Robert E. Fowler of Houston, provided all of the old letters and the Baird-Brown-Fowler family Bible records.  William Fowler must have died by 1930, for Georgia is in her mother’s household as a widow.

4.      William Guess Baird  (11 December 1858 - 1935)   He never married.  Known as “Tiny”, he was shown in the 1860 census as “Charles William”, but was evidently renamed after George William Guess, a Confederate colonel and Dallas bigwig who was a close friend of George Baird's.  (See the “letters” document, which includes a lengthy letter written in the field from Col. Guess to George Baird in 1862.)  He is “William G.” in the 1870 and later censuses.  Tiny never married.  He lived with his mother in 1880.  The Dallas city directories list him as a clerk in 1883, a traveling salesman in 1884, a pawnbroker in 1886, a salesman in 1889, a bartender in 1891, a salesman in 1900, a traveling salesman in 1915, and the president of the Merchants Produce Company in 1924.  He seems to have lived in Dallas with his sister Mary Emma Brown after the death of his mother, being listed with her in the city directory of 1893-4 and in the 1900-30 censuses.  In 1910 both he and his brother Robert are in her household, both listed as traveling salesmen for wholesale produce.  He is listed in his sister’s household as late as the 1930 census, when he is listed as owner of a produce company.

5.      Lee Baird  (13 July 1861 - 21 November 1884)  He also never married.  In 1880 he was living with his mother and working at Texas Baptist.  In the city directory of 1884 he was listed as a clerk for Richard Cohn.  I do not know how he died.

6.      Thomas Walker Baird  (13 October 1864 - 10 May 1865)  According to the Bible, he and Robert Edwin Baird were twins, Thomas dying as an infant.

7.      Robert Edwin Baird  (13 October 1864 - 25 October 1912)  He never married.  The Dallas city directories show him living with his mother in 1880, clerking for M. Sues.  In 1884 he was manager of A. J. Kraus.  In 1886 he ran Robert E. Baird, Pawnbrokers on Main Street.  In the 1889-1892 directories, he is operating Stanley & Baird grocers with Charles R. Stanley on Ross Street.  In the 1900 census he is listed in a rooming house on Main St. in Dallas as a traveling salesman, and the city directory lists him as a travel agent.  In 1910 he, with his brother William, were living with his sister Emma Brown, both listed in the city directory as traveling salesmen of wholesale produce.  In 1912 he was again listed as a traveling salesman.  Robert, though a resident of Dallas, died in Longview, Gregg County, Texas according to his estate records.  His will, dated 20 January 1912 and probated in Dallas later that year, left all his estate to his brother William. [23]  The estate consisted of a half-interest in two houses in Dallas, one of which he directed to be sold to pay in full for the other.[24]  The contingent beneficiary was his sister Emma Brown and, if both his brother and sister predeceased him, the estate was to go to “my niece Georgia B. Fowler.”