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. 
