Henry and Elizabeth Baird papers, 1798-1937
Title:
Henry and Elizabeth Baird papers, 1798-1937
Papers of Henry Samuel Baird, an attorney of Green Bay, Wisconsin, active in Territorial politics and Indian affairs, and his wife and other family members. Correspondence, business records, speeches and writings, clippings, and other materials concern the fur trade, Indians, the Civil War draft, Peshtigo fire relief, real estate transactions, genealogy, and family matters. Among the papers are Baird's memoranda on the trial of Oshkosh, 1830; two muster rolls of companies of Menominee Indians, 1832; some correspondence, 1848-1850, on the reoccupation of Fort Howard and the return of the Winnebago to the upper Wisconsin River; a few items on Stockbridge Indian affairs and on the fur trade and traders; papers accumulated by Baird as draft commissioner during the Civil War; 3 school copybooks; and some reminiscent articles on Wisconsin history. Among the business and professional papers are letters from Henry R. Schoolcraft, Eleazer Williams, Ramsay Crooks (one in 1842 describing the death of Joseph Rolette), from Crooks' sons, Ramsay, Jr. of New York City and William of St. Paul, concerning the disposition of their father's property at Green Bay, and from William Astor, 1861-1863, relating to Astor land at Green Bay. Henry Dodge and Horace Rublee are other correspondents. The large quantity of personal family correspondence includes photostats of letters exchanged by Baird and his future wife during their courtship; about three dozen letters written by his father, Henry Baird, while he was living at Cleveland, Ohio, from 1822 to 1832, and in 1835-1836 when he was employed by the government to teach farming methods to the Indians at Neenah (Winnebago Rapids), Wisconsin, and letters written in 1836 by Henry S. Baird to his wife and to his father describing the sessions of the territorial legislature meeting at Belmont. There are also letters addressed to Mrs. Baird from the wives and sisters of officers who had been stationed at Fort Howard for brief periods. Mrs. Baird's own letters, frequently written in French, depict frontier living conditions in Green Bay and other Wisconsin communities, and family correspondence of later dates reflects the changes in social and political life which occurred as the state became more populated. Other correspondence of Mrs. Baird concerns relief for victims in the forest fires of 1871. Additional papers of members of their families include many written during the first quarter of the nineteenth century concerning Mackinac Island, Michigan. Among them are more than two dozen papers of Madame Madeleine Laframboise, written mainly in French. These include rosters, 1814, 1817, and 1819, of Captain Benjamin K. Pierce's company, which was stationed at Fort Mackinac; one letter written by the Reverend Francois V. Badin in 1833 and others regarding early Catholic missionary work in the Northwest; several from Antoine Dequindre and from other business and social acquaintances in Detroit; and a number from her nephew Alexis Laframboise, in Montreal, and her son Joseph. Other letters, 1834-1853, were written by Joseph to his cousin Mrs. Baird from his fur-trading post at Little Rock on the Minnesota River and from other stations. Genealogical information are the Tenney family and the Grignon family is present.
ArchivalResource:
3.5 c.f. (5 archives boxes and 1 flat box)
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