The Life of James Baird, (and was his wife a Meaney)?

The signature page of the Tryon County Resolves, from allthingsliberty.com.
James Baird's signature is on the left page, second column, third from the bottom

James Baird was the grandfather of Hannah Baird Dean, and therefore my 6xgreat-grandfather. As discussed in a previous post, his relationship to the Dean line is fairly well documented (unlike his relationship to his probable father, John Baird).

What is known about James Baird?

Most genealogies list him as born in Pennsylvania in 1740, but the location is based on his father's residence there. It's not actually known if he was born in Pennsylvania or in North Carolina, where his family had moved by 1753. Originally, their property was in the county of Mecklenburg, North Carolina. In 1768, Mecklenburg was divided up, and the Baird property was in the section re-classified as Tryon County. In 1779, for various political reasons, the part of Tryon County where the Bairds lived was re-named Lincoln County.

Tryon county was known for its role in the Revolutionary War. The Tryon County Committee of Safety was one of the first militia groups to declare support for independence in the wake of the Battle of Lexington. The Tryon County Resolves, declaring a willingness to fight the British, was signed by 49 Tryon men on August 14, 1775. One of the signers was James Baird.

Can we be 100% certain this is the same James Baird as our ancestor? No, but it is a James Baird in the right place and at the right age. And our ancestor did fight in the Revolutionary war, as a captain in the Tryon County militia, making it quite likely that he was, indeed, the signer of the Resolves.

James Baird's wife's last name was "Meney". Her first name is variously given as Nancy, Anne, or Margaret, but her name wasn't given in his will.

The name "Meney" is quite rare, and searching for information about a Meney family in North Carolina has turned up almost nothing, certainly nothing that corresponds to what we know about the Baird family. However, names were not spelled consistently in that time and place. Baird, for example, was sometimes spelled Beard or Bard. Perhaps "Meney" was not the standard spelling?

I searched through the history of Tryon/Lincoln County North Carolina for a family with a similar-sounding name. I found only one: Mauney. One of the other signers of the Tryon Resolves was Valentine Mauney. If on-line genealogies can be trusted (and they can't!), Valentine Mauney was born around 1740, which would make him about ten years older than James Baird's wife. He was the middle of three brothers (Jacob and Christian being the others) who moved to North Carolina from Switzerland, via Pennsylvania. Could "Nancy Meney" Baird be an undocumented sister? Alternatively, Jacob Mauney was old enough in 1750 that she could possibly be his daughter.

Or, of course, she could be unrelated. Still, further research is justified. There is a book, Three Mauney Families, by Bonnie Eloise Mauney Summers, that might be able to clarify the situation. If anyone happens to run across a copy in their local bookstore, let me know.