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.

Who were the Bairds?

As I mentioned in my previous post, a little more information about Hannah Baird, my 4xgreat-grandmother, led to an extensive genealogy of the Bairds. I entered Hannah's family tree into wikitree on the basis of that information.

Unfortunately, as any genealogist knows, you can't trust family trees that don't include documentary sources. Lots of family myths were written down - even published - and now show up as "facts" in genealogies all over the world. So what is the genealogy I found, and what documentary evidence supports it?

The genealogy comes from the "The Baird Brigade: A Surname Booklet", by Barbara J. Peters, published in 1995. This is not a professionally published book, it's a pamphlet put together by a family member and scanned into a PDF. It's invaluable, however, because it includes a great deal of documentation, including bible records, cemetery records, tax lists, wills, letters, and marriage records. It is not limited to "our" Baird line, however. The genealogy that's relevant to John and Jane Hill Baird is "Branch #29" and "Branch #30", submitted by Theodore Claud "Ted" Baird. Unfortunately, in most cases his sources are not cited.

Below, I will lay out the genealogy (Baird line only), starting with Hannah Baird, and what evidence I currently have to support it.

Hannah Baird was the daughter of John Baird and Jane (Hill) Baird
     The evidence for this connection was discussed in my previous post.

John Baird (b. 1759 in Lincoln County, North Carolina, d. January 9, 1815, Georgetown Ohio) was the son of James Baird and Nancy Meney Baird
   The Ted Baird genealogy mentions James Baird's will dated to October 9, 1808, but doesn't give the actual wording. Presumably this will confirmed the genealogy Ted Baird laid out. This John Baird did have a son named John, who was mentioned in his will.

James Baird (b. c1740 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, d. October 11, 1808, Lincoln County, North Carolina) was the son of John Baird and Frances Scott Bradner
     Frances Scott Bradner left her son James 5 shillings sterling in her will. John Baird mentions his wife Frances and his son James in his will. Note, however, that James, John, William, and several other names were clearly very common within the broad Baird/Beard clan. There is no conclusive indication that the James Baird mentioned in this will is the one who married Nancy Meney and was father of the John Baird born in 1759. None the less, the will specifically names James as the heir to John's land on the Catawba Creek, which is where we know James 1759 was born. This seems a strong connection.

John Baird (b. c1720 in Hamilton, Pennsylvania, d. 1782 in Lincoln County, North Carolina) was the son of John Baird (or possibly William Baird) and Avis (Bowne) Baird.
     This is where things really get hairy. Was John Baird 1720 the son of John Baird 1707? There is a John Baird whose will leaves his estate to his wife Avis. But the only sons named are Andrew and Zebulon. Through a variety of triangulations, some researchers feel confident that they also had a son named John (as well as children named Mary, John, Alexander, and Elizabeth). (Source: Glenn Book). But this is still tentative, and others believe John 1720 was the son of William Baird and his wife, Agnes Clarihew. Similarly, the last name of John's wife is still debated. There is good circumstantial evidence that she was a Bowne, but it is not definitive. 
     Even more problematic (from my perspective) is the fact that John Baird 1720 was born in Pennsylvania, while John Baird 1707 lived in New Jersey his whole life. A lot of Scotch-Irish families moved from Scotland or Ireland into Pennsylvania in the early to mid 1700s. When the land in Pennsylvania started filling up, many followed the mountains down to North Carolina (skipping Virginia, whose religious laws were too restrictive for these staunch Presbyterians). But John Baird 1707 was a Quaker, and originally part of the Puritan Great Migration into New England. How did this Puritan/Quaker family from New England end up following the normal path of Scotch-Irish Presbyters? On the other hand, Zebulon Baird Vance is more clearly a descendant of John Baird 1707 (more on that in a later post), and his family followed this path. 

John Baird (b. January 28, 1707 in Monmouth, New Jersey, d. July 5, 1749 in Topenemus, Monmouth, New Jersey) was the son of John Baird and Mary (Osborne) Baird.
     Genealogical and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey, by Francis Bazley Lee (Lewis Historical Publishing Society, 1919) lists John Baird 1707 as the son of John Baird 1665. That book, however, gives his mother as Mary Hall, rather than Mary Osborne. 

John Baird (b. c1665 in Aberdeen, Scotland, d. April 6, 1755, in Topenemus, Monmouth, New Jersey) was the son of John Baird and Janet (Fatheringham) Baird
     The life of John Baird 1665 is, in general, fairly well documented. Who his parents were, and his relationship to other Bairds who lived in and around New Jersey at the time, is not nearly as clear. I have no known documentation of this relationship.

This post was not meant to be informative, so much as to give me some space to lay out what evidence we really do - and do not! - have about the Bairds. This lets me organize my thoughts, and hopefully will lead to more clarity in the future.