Who was Hannah Baird?

I have the great good fortune of being descended from avid genealogists. Perhaps preeminent among them was my great-aunt Lillian Dean Huffstetler. She accumulated a lot of information about the Dean lineage, some of which, I  know now, she got from her grandfather, David P. Dean, who was also an avid genealogist.

Since getting bitten by the genealogy bug, I've focused my efforts on tracing some of the family lines that she had not yet traced. One was the family of Hannah Baird.

Hannah Baird married John Stewart Dean. She was the mother of Abram Stewart Dean, making her my 4xgreat-grandmother. That was all I knew about her. Luckily, some on-line sleuthing led to a goldmine of information:

Evidence#1: A picture of her headstone stone from Ross County, Ohio. It reads "In Memory of Hannah Wife of John Dean who died April 19, 1828 in her 29 year". Her early death explains, in part, why so little information about her was passed down through time.

Photograph from http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=46363632

Evidence#2: A marriage license, issued to John "Deen" and Hannah Baird, in Brown, Ohio, on March 10, 1819.(1)

Now that I had a more specific region in which to look (Brown or Ross County, Ohio), I began looking for other Bairds.

Evidence#3: A marriage license, issued to John Baird and Catharine Dean, in Ross County, Ohio, on March 19, 1818.(2) Since frontier families often had more than one intermarriage, could this John Baird be a brother of Hannah Baird? And this Catharine Dean a sister of John Dean?

With a couple more names in my pocket (John Baird and Catharine Dean), I went looking through that treasure-trove of late 19th-century/early 20th-century books on local history and genealogy that have been scanned into Google, or uploaded onto the web, and are now searchable. I looked for all of these names, and bingo:

Evidence#4: In a book entitled "Wilson-Baird History"(3), I found the following description of John Hill Baird, including the fact that his wife Catharine was, indeed, the sister of John Stewart Dean (who was the son of Abram and Sarah Stewart Dean). Even better, it included his parents' names and where he was born.:

John Hill Baird: John Hill Baird, son of John and Jane Hill Baird, born on Catawba Creek about fifteen miles from the Kings Mountain battlefield on June 12, 1792 and died in Illinois on March 22, 1862. He went to Ohio with his father's family in 1811, and the next year he, with his future brothers-in-law, James and John Dean, were in the Ohio militia from Brown County, in the second war with Great Britain, serving under General Harrison. They were in the battles around Detroit, and in the invasion of Canada; were in the battle along the Thames River, and after victory there, they were mustered out of service at Sandusky, and walked back to Brown County. Here he purchased a farm of 140 acres of heavily timbered, but fertile land, two and a half miles East of Georgetown adjoining the farm of Jesse Grant, the father of U.S. Grant of illustrious fame. In 1817 he married Miss Catharine Dean, the oldest daughter of Abram and Sarah Stewart Dean, who came originally from Pennsylvania."

Success! Granted, the book doesn't say Hannah was John Baird's sister, it just says that Catharine was John Dean's sister. Still, getting closer. Armed now with the names of Hannah's probable parents (John and Jane Hill Baird, of Catawba Creek, North Carolina), it was much easier to fit Hannah into one of the well-researched Baird lineages. The following comes from the same source as above, a genealogy submitted by Ted Baird:

John Baird, b. 1759, Lincoln Co., NC; d. 9 Jan. 1815, at age 56, Georgetown, OH; m. Lincoln Co., NC., Jane Hill, d/o William Hill and Jane McCall, b. Clover, SC; d. Lincoln Co., NC.

Children of John and Jane:

1. Jane Baird, b. Lincoln Co. NC; m. Mr. (?) McCoy

2. Martha Baird "Ibby" b. Lincoln Co., NC,; m. Mr. (?) McCoy

3. Harvey Baird, b. 1806, Lincoln Co., NC.; d. Putnum Co., IL; m. Margaret J. Kirkpatrick [d. 8 June 1862]

4. Hannah Baird, b. Lincoln Co. NC; m. John Dean, brother of Catharine Dean

5. Nancy Elizabeth Baird, b. 1788, Lincoln Co., NC; d. Lawrence, KS; m. John Shepherd, Jr. 

6. John Hill Baird, b. 12 June 1792, Catawba Creek, NC; d. 12 March 1862, Hennepin, IL; m. 1st 12 March 1818, Catharine Dean

7. Amzi Baird, b. 1803, Lincoln Co., NC; d. Georgetown, OH; m 1st Julia ?; m. 2nd M. King

8. Polly Baird, "Mary", b. 10 April 1809, Lincoln Co, NC; m 1831, Putnum Co., IL. Nelson Shepherd

I don't know what sources were used to construct the above genealogy, but it corroborates my own educated guesses. The same book had a genealogy for this Baird line that went several generations back. More on that in a later post.

 References:

1. "Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-1997," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XZ88-BZP : accessed 11 January 2015), John Deen and Hannah Baird, 10 Mar 1819; citing Brown, Ohio, United States, reference Book A No. 1 Pg. 22; county courthouses, Ohio; FHL microfilm 384,273.

2. . "Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2013," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XZKD-ST5 : accessed 9 April 2015), John Baird and Catharine Dean, 12 Mar 1818; citing Ross, Ohio, United States, reference item 1 p 344; county courthouses, Ohio; FHL microfilm 281,637.

3. "Wilson-Baird History", by Fran C. Shepherd.1942. Available here:  http://baird-bard-beard.org/BB/downloads/Volume5-March1995.pdf)