Moses Baird
Moses Baird was born near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January 3, 1762. His father, James Baird, came from near Londonderry, in the north of Ireland. His mother was a Miss Brown, also from Ireland.
Moses Baird married Mary Adams, July 5, 1787, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a woman of remarkable natural endowments and of distin guished and cultivated ability. They had one son, Robert, born in Pennsylvania, in 1788.
They located in Adams County in the rich Irish Bottoms, at Sandy Springs, on the Ohio River, and took up a tract about a mile square. Those who located with them were Joshua Truitt, William Early, Jona than Kenyon, Abner Ewing, above, and John Adams, and Simeon Truitt, below.
They had in all thirteen children, twelve being thereafter born in Adams County, as follows: Margaret, 1781; Alexander, 1792; Eliza beth, 1794; Polly, 1796; Newton, 1799; James A., 1801 : John A., 1803; Joseph C. V., 1805; Harvey, 1807; Harriet A., 1809; Chambers, 181 1; Susan A., 1814.
Moses Baird was one of the Justices of the Peace of Adams County and one of its Common Pleas Judges under the Territory. He was elected a Commissioner of the County in 1803 and served three years. He was elected an Associate Judge of the County February 10, 1810, and served until April 10, 1821. He died November 1, 1841, and is buried in the Sandy Springs cemetery. He was tall, slender and active. He had a light complexion, brown hair, blue eyes, was nearly six feet tall, wore side whiskers and shaved the rest of his face. He was an easy, fluent talker, clear and concise in his expressions. He was an excellent judge of human nature and could judge a man on sight. He had easy manners, was pleasant and approachable. He was a good farmer and manager. He lived like a lord on his mile square of land. He raised all the crops he required and had five orchards of apples, peaches, plums and cherries. He had a great lot of stock, horses, cattle, hogs and sheep. He had all manner of fowls. He grew his own flax and sheared his own wool and made it into cloth on his own farm. His wife was a woman of great social attractiveness. She was one of the pioneer doctresses and a noted mid-wife, and died April 13, 1835, of a putrid sore throat, (diphtheria?) which came of attending a child which had the same disease. She and her husband were members of the Sandy Springs Church, and her religion was such that its influence could be felt by all who associated with them. Susan A., their youngest daughter, was the wife of James McMaster, who is ;-till living (1899) at Sandy Springs, aged eighty-four. Their youngest son, Chambers, has a separate sketch herein. Their first three children, Robert, Elizabeth Adams and James A., made themselves homes within the original tract taken .up by their father. The others went elsewhere into the Great West, and the descendants of Moses Baird are a great multitude, whom the census taker could enumerate, but it would take him a long time and a great deal of labor.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900