Jay Baird

JAY BAIRD, M. D. The medical profession of Kansas has one of its able representatives in Dr. Jay Baird of Coffeyville. Doctor Baird is a man of broad experience, splendidly equipped professionally, and has acquired success and high standing in this state, and is particularly well known among eclectic physicians, and in 1915-16 served as president of the State Eclectic Medical Association.

Some generations back his ancestors were prominent Scotch people, and in that country enjoyed the distinction of a coat of arms marking them one of the ancient clans of Scotland. This coat of arms represents a bull and boar rampant. From Scotland the Bairds came to Pennsylvania in colonial times.

Josiah Baird, grandfather of Doctor Baird, was born in Pennsylvania, in 1802, and when he was quite young his parents moved to Muskingum County, Ohio, where he married and where he took up the trade of blacksmith. A number of years later, along in the '50s, he moved out to Iowa with his son, the father of Doctor Baird, and lived in Van Buren County of that state until his death in 1886. In religion he was a stanch old Covenanter Presbyterian. Politically he was a republican. Josiah Baird married Mary Thompson, who was born in Ohio in 1806 and died in Van Buren County, Iowa, in 1892. Their children were: Nathan; Cephas, who was a minister of the Lutheran Church and died in California; Letitia, who married Uriah Law, and both are now deceased, she having died at Troy in Davis County, Iowa.

Dr. Jay Baird was born near Keosauqua, Van Buren County, Iowa, October 23, 1870. His father, Nathan Baird, was born in Ohio in 1838, grew to manhood in that state, where he married his first wife, and along in the '50s moved out to Van Buren County, Iowa, where he was one of the pioneer settlers and until the close of his life, which occurred on his home farm in Van Buren County in 1900, he followed farming and stock raising. He was a very active member of the United Presbyterian Church, and in politics was a republican. During the Civil war he was a member of the Home Guards. Nathan Baird married for his first wife Susan Liming, who was born in Ohio and died in Van Buren County, Iowa. Their children were: Jefferson F., a merchant at Odell, Illinois; Luther C., a merchant at Sioux City, Iowa; Howard, a stock man in Van Buren County, Iowa. For his second wife, Nathan Baird married Lurinda Sophia Jones, who was born in Ohio in 1852 and still lives on the old farm in Iowa. Her children were: Seth, who is a farmer near the old place in Iowa; Oscar, who graduated from the Eclectic Medical College at Cincinnati and is now a physician and surgeon at Chanute, Kansas; Dr. Jay Baird is the third of the children; Rufus, the next younger died at the age of five years; Flo is the wife of Harry L. Gleason, a jeweler in Boston, Massachusetts; Clay runs the old home farm in Van Buren County, Iowa, his farm comprising a quarter section of land; Justice graduated from the University of Michigan, where he received his law degree and received the degree of Bachelor of Science from the State University of Iowa and is now in active practice at Kansas City, Kansas.

From a varied early experience as a farmer boy, student and teacher, Dr. Jay Baird pointed his career toward medicine. He attended district schools in his home county in Iowa, graduated from the Keosauqua High School, and for three years taught in Van Buren County. This was followed by a year spent in the State Agricultural College at Ames, Iowa, and another year in the State Normal School at Cedar Falls. Earning his way by teaching, he began his medical education in the State University of Iowa, where he spent two years, and beginning with 1897 practiced medicine as an undergraduate at Vilas, Kansas. He was there for a year and a half. He finished his medical course in 1900 in the Eclectic Medical College at Cincinnati, where he was graduated M. D. After graduating 2 1/2 years were spent in Nebraska, but in 1902 he located at Coffeyville, and has been steadily in practice there both as a physician and surgeon ever since. A large part of his practice in recent years is as a specialist in diseases of children. In 1914 he took a special course in that department of medicine in the Chicago Policlinic. Doctor Baird has his offices at 126 West Ninth Street, and is a member of the County and State Medical societies and belongs to all the medical associations of the Eclectic School, county, state and national.

Besides his residence at 105 West First Street, Doctor Baird owns a fruit farm of forty acres in the Bitter Root Valley of Montana, also a tract of land in Oklahoma, and some 600 acres in Arkansas. Politically he is an independent republican, and is a trustee and active supporter of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He is affiliated with Camp No. 665, Modern Woodmen of America at Coffeyville, belongs to the Commercial Club, and for four years was a member of the City School Board. While on the school board he was instrumental in raising the general standard of the local public schools.

In 1900 in Iowa Doctor Baird married Miss Ida K. Minear, a daughter of George and Emma Minear, both now deceased. Her father was a farmer and stockman in Van Buren County, Iowa. Doctor and Mrs. Baird have three children: Byrle, born November 15, 1902, and a student in the public schools; Bruce M., born August 9, 1906, and also in school; and Lois Catherine, born November 9, 1913.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME 1 & 2
BIOGRAPHIES — VOLUMES 3, 4, & 5
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