2 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



older renderings of the name included Bard, Barde, 

 Beard, Beart, Byrd, and Bayard; the spelling Baird is 

 noted only from the latter part of the sixteenth century. 

 The arms of the families bearing the name usually include 

 a wild boar or a bear, with the motto "Dominus fecit." 

 The family were slow to renounce Catholicism after 

 the Reformation, and still slower to cease their allegiance 

 to the Stuarts. Yet some of them adhered to the Scottish 

 church, and in the swinging of the political pendulum 

 became High Sheriffs, Commissaries, and dignitaries of 

 sorts. Among those of the name was at least one High 

 Admiral, a Governor of Surinam (in the Dutch service), 

 an English Resident in India, many knights and more 

 than one baronet. The earliest American settler noted 

 by Fraser is Patrick, son of Sir James Baird of Auch- 

 medden, who settled in Philadelphia as a surgeon early 

 in the eighteenth century, and returned, a widower, to 

 Edinburgh in 1754. From which branch of this numerous 

 and honorable family the Pennsylvania Bairds sprang 

 is not evident from the data at hand. No names of artists, 

 literary men or naturalists adorn Mr. Eraser's genealogies. 

 Men of action, of law, and of trade abound in them. An 

 old legend offers the only evidence that the family took 

 any interest in ornithology. According to a prophecy of 

 Thomas the Rhymer (it ran) there "would always be 

 an eagle in the crags of Pennan while there was a Baird 

 in Auchmedden;" and there always was one down to the 

 time when the Earl of Aberdeen purchased the estate 

 from the Bairds. Then the eagles disappeared. But 

 when his eldest son, Lord Haddo, married Miss Christian 

 Baird of Newbyth, the eagles returned to the rocks, and 

 continued there until the estate passed into the hands of 

 the Hon. William Gordon, when they again departed. 



