Harry Leon Baird

 (18 February 1887 - 24 December 1945)

 

I really don't know much about Harry, and I don't think my father knew a great deal about him either.  For example, we know his middle initial was "L", but my father could only guess at his middle name.

 

Harry’s father died when he was almost eight.  If, as we think, his mother remarried and moved to New Mexico, Harry did not go with her.  My father and his mother believed that Harry, and his sister Daisy, may have lived with their Stewart grandparents for a short while.  However, both Harry and Daisy were in the household of their older sister, Effie Pemberton, in the 1900 census.  I don't know what happened to him after the Pembertons divorced.  Harry was shown in the 1910 census as a telephone lineman, perhaps a trade he learned from his grandfather, Moses Stewart.  According to my father, Harry worked throughout northeastern Texas and. at some point he worked for the Red Hook Telephone Company in Morris County.  Allie Anthony was a telephone operator for the same company, perhaps explaining how they met.

 

He and Allie Anthony married on 21 February 1915, in Omaha, Texas (Morris County).  She said they lived for a time with her parents.  However, the 1920 census shows them living on Preston Street in Wolfe City, Texas (northwest of Commerce in Hunt County) with Harry listed as a worker in a flour mill.[1]  They moved back to Omaha to live with her parents before my father was born.  My father, their only child, was born in 1921 in the Anthony house on South Main Street, and was delivered by his grandfather Dr. Anthony.  Harry and Allie continued to live with her parents, and both died in that house.

 

Harry eventually quit working and started repairing small appliances in the basement of the Anthony house.  He also did odd jobs - his death certificate listed his occupation as "painter".  He much preferred hunting and fishing to working, and apparently was content to live with the Anthonys and work part time, if at all.  He also learned to play the violin and played in a local band.  Allie gave piano lessons and played at the Baptist church.  I have several photographs of the two of them taken in the 1920s through the early 1940s

 

Harry died on Christmas Eve 1945.  I don't remember it, but my parents drove from Washington, DC to Texas for the funeral.  Edward Young Anthony died a month later.  Allie and her mother continued living in the Anthony house.  I remember spending nearly every summer with them through the late 1950s.  Allie remarried to Corry Wright, but remained in her mother's house.  Her mother died there in 1969 and Allie in 1977.

 

They had one child, my father:

 

1.      Jack Anthony Baird (27 May 1921 - 23 May 1986)