16 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



His four grandparents were the children of colonial Penn- 

 sylvanians, and he was characteristically American; over 

 eighty per cent, of his progenitors having come to New 

 England or Pennsylvania during the seventeenth century." 



Whatever may be said of environment, the character 

 and temperament of every man are formed by an ancestral 

 complex. There is reason for profound gratitude when 

 one may look back to a line of worthy and intelligent 

 forbears. In seeking to understand the derivation of 

 characteristics in any great man, such help as may be had 

 must be derived from a consideration of his progenitors. 

 I offer therefore no apology for this somewhat lengthy 

 genealogical chapter, which gives such data as could be 

 derived from the material available, most of the Baird 

 family papers having been destroyed, according to the 

 account given by Miss Lucy Baird in her notes. 



The following genealogical diagrams will enable those 

 interested to trace the direct lines. The first is largely 

 derived from a table compiled by Professor Baird when 

 in his teens. The second was contributed chiefly by J. D. 

 Sergeant, Esq., of Philadelphia, a relative of the Bairds, 

 in memoranda dated 1890. They have been confirmed 

 by comparison with the tables in "The Autobiography 

 of Charles Biddle" (1883), where the Biddle genealogy is 

 exhaustively treated. 



