Baird, Robert

BAIRD, ROBERT: Presbyterian; b. near Uniontown, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, Oct. 6, 1796; d. at Yonkers, N. Y., Mar. 15, 1863. He was graduated at Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Penn., 1818, and at Princeton Seminary in 1822; was ordained in 1828 and thenceforth devoted his life to the cause of total abstinence, education, and the effort to spread Protestantism in Roman Catholic countries. He resided in Europe as agent of the French Association and of its successor, the Foreign Evangelical Society, from 1835 to 1843, and continued in the service of the society in the United States 1843-46; from 1849 to 1855 he was corresponding secretary of the American and Foreign Christian Union and again, 1861 to his death; his ninth mission to Europe was made in 1861. He wrote Histoire des sociétés de tempérance des États-Unis d’Amérique (Paris, 1836); Religion in the United States of America (Glasgow, 1844); Sketches of Protestantism in Italy (Boston, 1845).

Bibliography: H. M. Baird, Life Of Rev. Robert Baird, New York, 1866 (by his son).