1

Baird Thos Sr OriginsSheila M. Most 4/15/2014

THOMAS (W?) BAIRD (abt 1764 in ? -14 Mar 1844 in Logan County, Ohio)

His Wife:ELEANOR “NELLIE” LNU BAIRD (abt 1765 in ?- 24 Sep 1844 in West Liberty, Logan, Ohio)

My Maternal 4thGreat Grandparents

  1. Problem:
  2. Where in Kentucky did Thomas (W?) Baird, Sr., his wife, Eleanor “Nellie” LNU Baird, and their 9 childrenlivebefore they moved to Champaign County (now Logan County), Ohio, abt 1808?
  3. Where did they come from originally? (Were they born in the US? Where? Where were they married? What was Eleanor’s maiden name?)
  4. Thomas Baird, Sr. was Scots-Irish. Did he immigrate to the US, or was it his father or grandfather and when? (I’d love to get them back to the “old sod.”)
  1. What I know:
  1. Thomas Baird, Sr. and two of his sons traveled to LibertyTwp, Champaign (now Logan) County, Ohio[see attached map], about 1808 from Kentucky—probably fromParis, Bourbon County[see attached map]. The father and 2 sonsprobablypreceded the rest of the family to clear the land and construct a house. These two sonswould have been John R. Baird (b. 2 Oct 1788; abt 20 years old in 1808) and Thomas Baird, Jr. (b. 25 Dec 1800; abt 8 years old in 1808). Thomas, Sr.’s third son, Robert Baird (b. 30 Aug 1806), would have been left behind with his mother, since he was just a toddler in 1808. Thomas’s wife, Eleanor “Nellie” LNU Baird, their 6 daughters, and little Robertprobablyjoined the males in Liberty Twp. before 1814.
  1. The Bairds lived in Kentucky before moving to Ohio
  2. Elizabeth “Betsy” Baird, the 5th child of 9,was born in Kentucky abt 1798 (1860 and 1870 US Censuses).
  1. Cecelia “Celia” Baird,the 7th child of 9, was born in 1802in Kentucky abt 1802 (1850 and 1860 US Censuses).
  1. The Bairds probably lived in or near Paris, Bourbon, Kentucky before moving to Ohio[see attached map].
  2. Their son Thomas Baird, Jr. (my 2nd great grandfather), the 6th child of 9, was born 25 Dec 1800 in Paris, Bourbon, Kentucky.

Find a Grave Memorial #109973894.

I have another source for his date and place of birth, but I cannot locate it now.

  1. “Bourbon County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2010 census, the population was 19,985.[1] Its county seat is Paris, Kentucky.[2]

“Bourbon County[today] is the remnant of what was previously a much larger Bourbon County, established as part of Virginia in 1785,[3] and comprising what are now thirty-four modern Kentucky counties. The area later became known as Old Bourbon in reference to its historical expanse. It was originally part of the French province of Louisiana, then after 1763 became part of Virginia, but was transferred to the newly formed Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1792.” (See attached maps.)

“Bourbon County, Kentucky.” Wikipedia.

“Bourbon County, the fifth county in order of formation, is located in the central Bluegrass region, and has an area of 292 square miles. Its boundaries originally extended northward to the Ohio River and eastward to the Big Sandy, taking in land that has since been split into more than thirty counties. Virginia subdivided Fayette County in 1785 and honored the French royal family by naming the fifth western county Bourbon. It was rich in timber, cane, pasture grass, fertile soil, and limestone and had many creeks and springs. Early Bourbon settlers claimed choice farmland and built homes, mills, taverns, warehouses, businesses, churches, and a courthouse on the hill near the confluence of Houston and Stoner creeks. The county seat, Hopewell (renamed Paris in 1790), became an economic center as the population grew in the early 1800s.”

The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

  1. Thomas Baird, Sr., and his two older sonscame to Liberty Twp., Champaign, Ohioabout 1808.
  2. "Among the first settlers [of Liberty Twp, Champaign—now Logan—County, OH] were Thomas Baird and two sons, the Newell family--Samuel Newell coming from Kentucky in about 1808,—the Shields, Henry Fulton, James Walds and three sons, the Hayes family, Samuel Blair, Col. John Walds, Abner Snoddy, William Gray and family, William McBeth and family, Vachal Blaylock, John Dunn, the Grindles, William Burkhardt, Gerton Broughton, a cooper by trade, now residing in Bellefontaine; William Creviston, John Creviston, Judge Shelby, Henry Sechrist, Sr., Lynx Wiler, John K. Taylor, the Howells, Nathaniel Kelley, Thomas Newell’s wife and heirs, the Culbertsons, Widow Pickering.”

Perrin, William Henry and J.H. Battle. History of Logan County and Ohio containing a History of the State of Ohio, from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time ... A History of Logan County, Giving an Account of Its Aboriginal Inhabitants ... Biographical Sketches, Portraits of Some of the Early Settlers and Prominent Men, etc. Chicago: O. L. Baskin & Co. Historical Publishers, 1880, p. 548.

  1. Thomas Baird, Sr. owned land in Logan County
  1. Thomas Baird, Sr. & Eleanor Baird sold land 4 Nov 1829 to James Campbell and Henry Neville.

“Marshal’s Sales,” Ohio Monitor (Columbus, Ohio), Wednesday, November 4, 1829, p. 3

This entire product and/or portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or the American Antiquarian Society. 2004. Source: GenealogyBank.com

  1. Thomas Baird, Sr.’s land was surveyed 27 Oct 1848 for Thomas Baird, Jr., Administrator of his father’s estate.

No. 635, p. 137.

  1. Did Thomas Baird, Sr.receive a land grant in Champaign County, Ohio [Logan County was later formed from Champaign: [see attached map],from the US government for serving in the Revolutionary War or the French and Indian War? (If he was born in 1764, he would have been awfully young to have served in the Revolutionary War, but maybe the French and Indian War.)

“A large potion of Ohio, prior to the Revolution, formed part of the domain of Virginia, under charter from King James. At the close of the war, she ceded to the United Stated this territory, reserving, however, all the lands lying between the Little Miami and Scioto Rivers, in Ohio[see attached map], for the purpose of paying the Virginia soldiers who served in the war of the Revolution. A portion of Champaign was included in this reservation, and the road known as the ‘Ludlow line’—passing north and south through Salem and Union Townships—marks one of the western lines of the reservation.”

History of Champaign County, Ohio, Containing a History of the County; Its Cities, Towns, etc.; General and Local Statistics; Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; History of the Northwest Territory; History of Ohio; Map of Champaign County; Constitution of the United States, Miscellaneous Matters, etc., etc. Illustrated. Chicago: W. H. Beers & Co., 1881, p. 208.

  1. Thomas Baird, Sr., his wifeEleanor “Nellie” Baird,4 of their 6 daughters were among the nearly 100 charter members of the Bethel Christian—a.k.a. Muddy RunChurch—organized in 1814; thus, the whole family was in Liberty Twp by 1814. (TheChristian Church—later Church of Christ—refers to a sect of Protestantism, as in “Methodist” or “Baptist,” rather than to the Christian religion in general, as in “Christian,” “Jewish,” or “Muslim.”)
  1. “A group of Kentucky's early settlers built Cane Ridge Meeting House in 1791. Nestled among Kentucky's rolling hills and gracious horse farms, Cane Ridge Meeting House is located on State Highway 537 in Bourbon County, Kentucky[near Paris]. It is believed to be the largest one-room log structure standing in North America. It is the symbol of the late 18th and early 19th Century Western Great Revival. The Cane Ridge Presbyterian congregation with its pastor Barton Warren Stone were hosts for the event that took place here in August 1801.

“Following the advice of pioneer explorer and guide Daniel Boone, a group of Scots-Irish Presbyterians from North Carolina settled in the area [near Paris, Bourbon, Kentucky] in 1790. At the same time that they were building homes and establishing livelihoods, they cut and hewed blue ash logs for the Meeting House's walls and oak and chestnut trees for beams and roof supports.”

Cane Ridge Meeting House.

  1. Thomas Baird, Sr., was Scots-Irish and was likely raised in thePresbyterian Church, but converted with his family to the Christian Church before moving to Ohio.
  1. In Kentucky, the Bairds must have come in contact with the Rev. Barton W. Stone, a renegade Presbyterian who became a preacher of the Christian Church (later called the Church of Christ) in Kentucky. This Church attracted most of their members from among Presbyterians, Methodists, and some Baptists.
  1. “Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), evangelist, founder of the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ, was born into a farming family of Episcopalian background near Port Tobacco, Maryland. The family later moved to Virginia and in 1790 Stone enrolled in an academy run by a Presbyterian pastor in Guilford, North Carolina. While there he underwent a conversion experience and began to look to the ministry as his life work.

“Questioning many traditional Calvinist assumptions, by the late 1790sStone had moved to Tennessee and by 1798 was serving as a Presbyterian pastor for a pair of churches in Bourbon County, Kentucky. After investigating a revival in western Kentucky,he returned to one of his churches in Cane Ridge, Kentucky[near Paris, Bourbon, KY] determined to stoke a revival similar to what he had just witnessed. The result was the famed Cane Ridge camp meeting where Stone and a group of mostly Presbyterian ministers preached to more than 20,000 people enflamed by emotion and mysterious physical manifestations (‘exercises’).

“Stone and associates’ involvement in that meeting and subsequent revivals caused trouble within several local presbyteries and as a result they decided to form and then abolish their own independent presbytery in 1804. Calling themselves simply “Christian,” the new movement questioned some elements of traditional Christology including the equality of the Son and the Father. In 1824 Stone came into contact with Alexander Campbell and over the next few years the two corresponded over their doctrinal similarities and differences. By 1829 Campbell had formally pulled out of the Baptists and Stone, having toned down some of his more unorthodox speculation, proposed that the two groups merge. Campbell had reservations but finally in 1832 the two groups, numbering about 15,000 followers across the Ohio Valley, merged together in a piecemeal fashion. In his latter years Stone became an enthusiastic critic of slavery and booster of the American Colonization Society’s plans to resettle slaves in Africa.”

Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals.

  1. “Stone became famous and powerful during the Cane Ridge Revival (1801), an all out roll-in-the-sawdust frontier Pentecostal-like revival in Kentucky. (Hard-line Churches of Christ today follow Campbell in rejecting Pentecostalism and any form of emotionalism.) Stone emphasized a more mystical emotional relationship with God and saw the church as so holy that it stood outside of human government.

Ex Church of Christ Support Group.

  1. Revival at Cane Ridge [Kentucky]

“Friday, August 6, 1801—wagons and carriages bounced along narrow Kentucky roads, kicking up dust and excitement as hundreds of men, women, and children pressed toward Cane Ridge, a church about 20 miles east of Lexington. They hungered to partake in what everyone felt was sure to be an extraordinary ‘Communion.’

“By Saturday, things were extraordinary, and the news electrified this most populous region of the state; people poured in by the thousands. One traveler wrote a Baltimore friend that he was on his way to the ‘greatest meeting of its kind ever known’ and that ‘religion has got to such a height here that people attend from a great distance; on this occasion I doubt not but there will be 10,000 people.’

“He underestimated, but his miscalculation is understandable. Communions (annual three-to-five-day meetings climaxed with the Lord’s Supper) gathered people in the dozens, maybe the hundreds. At this Cane Ridge Communion, though, sometimes 20,000 people swirled about the grounds—watching, praying, preaching, weeping, groaning, falling. Though some stood at the edges and mocked, most left marveling at the wondrous hand of God.

“The Cane Ridge Communion quickly became one of the best-reported events in American history, and according to Vanderbilt historian Paul Conkin, ‘arguably … the most important religious gathering in all of American history.’ It ignited the explosion of evangelical religion, which soon reached into nearly every corner of American life. For decades the prayer of camp meetings and revivals across the land was ‘Lord, make it like Cane Ridge.’”

(Christian History.

  1. The Bairds moved to West Liberty, Liberty Twp., Champaign County, Ohio,almost surely as part of the group following the Rev. Richard Clark, himself a follower of the Rev. Barton W. Stone.

“Early in the last century a very prominent man whose name was Barton W. Stone was a preacher of the Christian churchin Kentucky. It was he who stood as a champion of the people who were rising in rebellion against a growing ecclesiasticism in the church.From his church came a colony of citizens to this section of the country [West Liberty, Liberty Twp., Champaign County—now Logan County—Ohio] about 1814. Meetings were at first held in the forests, but in almost a year a church was formally organized and a meeting house, one of the very first in this part of the county, was erected. The members entered into a covenant which follows: ‘We, the members of the Christian church at Bethel have hereunto subscribed our names, taking the word of God for our doctrine, discipline and government, promising subjection to each other in the Lord, according thereunto in the year one thousand eight hundred and fourteen.

“The following list of charter members contains the names of many of the pioneers who were most influential in every righteous enterprise: Richard Clark [the minister and follower of Barton W. Stone], James McIlvain, Thomas Baird [Sr.], John Wall, Robert Crockett, William Newel [sic], Alexander Black, Patty Crockett, Moses McIlvain, Flora McIlvain, Nellie Baird [Eleanor LNU Baird, wife of Thomas Baird, Sr.], Nancy Clark, Netty Wall, Peggy McIlvain, Jane Clark, Polly Wall, Jane Black, Polly Cartmell [sic, Cartmill], Jane McNay, Nancy McNay, John Williams, Jane Williams, Jane Leeper, Malinda Wall, Patsey Crockett, Samuel Covington, Mary Covington, James Wall, Rhoda Shields, Thomas Clark, Robert Clark, James Steel, Jr., John G. McIlvain, William Hopkins, Elizabeth Hopkins, Betsey Baird [Elizabeth Baird], Abner Snoddy, William Boyd, Ann Boyd, Peter Stipp [as widower, marries Martha ‘Pattie’ Baird], Elizabeth Stipp, Polly Leeper, Priscilla King, Hannah Snoddy, Aaron Rhodes, Elizabeth Rhodes, Polly Rhodes, Sarah Robertson, George F. Dunn, William Miles, Jeremiah Fuson, Jane Fuson, Catherine Snoddy, Betsy Vickers, Betsy Rhodes, Samuel Collins, Pattie Baird [Martha Baird],Celia Baird [Cecelia Baird], Robert McIlvain, Benjamin Wall, Mary Kelley, Sarah Kelley, Jane Petty, Isaac Davis, Susananna [sic] Moose, Ann McIlvain [marries Thomas Baird, Jr.], Margaret Henning [marries Robert Baird], George Petty, Eleonora Baird, Garland Crocket [sic], John L. McIlvain [marries Eleanor(a) Baird] , Jacob Snoddy, Josiah Hopkins, James Stackhouse, Polly Stackhouse, Carmill [sic, Cartmill; marries Cecelia ‘Celia’ Baird] Crockett, Houston Crockett, Asenith Crockett, Louisa Crockett and many others. [Middleton’sabove list of charter members of the Bethel Christian/Muddy Run Church omits several names included in the similar list in History of Logan County and Ohioedited by William Henry Perrin and J. H. Battle, p. 555. Those names areMoses McIlvain, Jr. Peggy McIlvain, Jr., Betsey Newell, and Sally Snoddy.]

“The religious importance of this church, commonly known as the Muddy Run church, is shown by the fact that for many years it was the only churchin the country near where West Liberty now is. People came for miles from every direction to attend divine services there in the old log meeting house.

“THE WHITE PILGRIM

“In the absence of adequate records not much of the very early history of this church can be given, but the names of a few who where instrumental in accomplishing a great deal of good in the church were the following pioneers: Caleb Worley, Richard Clark [the pastor who led his flock from KY to OH], James Hayes, Matthew Marvin, David Purviance, Levi Purviance, D. F. Ladley, Mahlon Baker, Hallett Barber, Richard Simonton, Hiram Simonton, Isaac N. Waters, Samuel Fuson, James Fuson, Jeremiah Fuson [who officiated at the marriages of two of Thomas Baird, Sr.’s sons: Robert Baird and Margaret Henning 5 Apr 1827 and Thomas Baird, Jr and Ann(a) McIlvain3 Jan1829], and Joseph Thomas. Many of these men were widely known in their day, and rendered noble service not only to this church but to many of the churches of Kentucky and Ohio. Among these, David Purviance stands out as an exceptional character. Joseph Thomas, better known as “The White Pilgrim.” because he usually dressed in white both winter and summer in emulation, as he believed, of the apostolic examples. He was about six feet high, light complexion, straight, athletic, and ruggedly healthy.