SPENCER FULLERTON BA1RD 63 



SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



By T. D. A. COCKERELL 1 



UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO 



SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD was born at Reading, Pa., on 

 February 3, 1823. He was the third child, as well as the third 

 son, of Samuel Baird and Lydia Biddle Baird. Samuel Baircl was 

 a lawyer and a man of education and scholarly tastes, very much inter- 

 ested in natural history in a general way, although he could hardly be 

 called a naturalist. He died when S. F. Baird was only ten years old; 

 but it was from him, in those early years, that the latter got the orig- 

 inal impulse toward the study of natural objects. 



Professor Baird's ancestry, as we learn from Dr. Brown Goode, was 

 English on one side; on the other Scotch 2 and German. His paternal 

 grandfather was Samuel Baird, of Pottstown, Pa., a surveyor by pro- 

 fession, whose wife was Rebecca Potts. The Bairds were from Ireland, 

 while the Potts family removed from Germany to Pennsylvania at the 

 close of the seventeenth century. His great grandfather on the 

 mother's side was the Rev. Elihu Spencer, of Trenton, who was one of 

 the war preachers of the Revolution, and was so influential that, accord- 

 ing to tradition, a price was set on his head by the British government ; 

 his daughter married William M. Biddle, a banker of an English 

 family for many generations established in Pennsylvania. 



After the death of Professor Baird's father, his mother, with her 

 seven children, moved to Carlisle, the county seat of Cumberland 

 County, Pa., where her nearest relatives were then living. Young 

 Baird was educated at the grammar school at Carlisle, and at Dickin- 

 son College, in that city; graduating from the latter at the age of 

 seventeen. The boys of the Baird family were all interested in shoot- 

 ing; but the oldest, William McFunn Baird, and the subject of the 



1 1 am greatly indebted to Miss Lucy H. Baird for information, for access 

 to portions of Professor Baird's diary, and especially for some unpublished 

 notes for a memoir of her father, written by herself. The last, with her kind 

 permission, has been freely used and incorporated in the present work. I am 

 also much indebted to the authorities of the Smithsonian Institution for 

 permission to examine Baird's letter-books; and to Drs. Dall, Ridgway, Gill, 

 Mason and others for much kind help. I have also availed myself of the 

 published memoirs of Baird, especially that of Dr. Brown Goode, with the 

 accompanying bibliography (Bull. 20, U. S. Nat. Museum). 



2 Properly speaking, ' Scotch-Irish,' i. e., from Ireland, but of Scotch blood. 



