Baird, John Barnett

John Barnett & Agness Elizabeth Sloss Baird
From Proud Heritage, Vol 1 by DCPA. This 300 page hardcover book is available online.

John Barnett Baird was the first child born to the marriage of David Baird to Winifred Sloss in old Kentucky. He was born in Simpson County Kentucky 3 November 1815. His father was the eighth son of Alexander Baird, a miller, in Richmond County, North Carolina.

Having finished school in the Spring of 1841, he married his cousin, Agnes Elizabeth Sloss, on 18 October 1841. Her father was Thomas L. Sloss, a physician who practiced in Warren County, Kentucky. It is thought that John Barnett lived with and practiced with his father-in-law (and uncle) in Warren County from 1841 until 1847.

John Barnett received a normal school education in Simpson County, Kentucky, and did a preceptorship in medicine under Dr. John A. Crowder in Franklin, Kentucky. He hen attended the fourth session of the Medical Institute of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, 1840-1841. (Requirements for a degree in medicine at the time were a year of preceptorship with a practicing Physician, who was not required to have a degree, and one semester of didactic training at a college of medicine, or, two semesters of formal training, after which the candidate in either case had to write a thesis. The medical school classes ran from the completion of harvest one year until planting time the next - through the winter.) John Barnett finished the course, but never wrote a thesis. He was therefore eligible to practice medicine, and to be called "doctor", but was not entitled to the degree, "M.D."

In 1856 he moved to Honey Grove where, with his brother, Thomas Wesley Baird, he helped start the Masonic Institute school as a member of the Board of Trustees. In 1860 he moved to Jacksonville, where the political climate was unsettling. He stayed there but one year, moving to Lewisville in 1861. The Civil War was not kind to him economically. After the war he was joined by his brother, James Monroe Baird, M. D., in practice in Lewisville.

In April, 1847, he sold his property in Warren County, Kentucky, borrowed two hundred dollars from his brother-in-law, and left for Texas. He look up residence near the home of his father, "on the Spivy", near Honey Grove but across the county line in Lamar County.

He next moved to Breckenridge, Dallas County, in December 1868, where he practiced until 1876, when he retired and moved to a house at 623 Ross Avenue, just outside the City Limits. He lived in this house and spent his time writing and communicating with his family until his death at the age of 67 on 22 May 1882. Among other things, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Dallas.

Agnes Elizabeth Sloss Baird continued to live in the house on Ross Avenue until her death on 14 May 1897. The 1880 City Directory described the retirement home of Dr. and Mrs. Baird as being "just out of the city limits, six blocks from the river". Family members occupied the house for many years following the deaths of Dr. and Mrs. Baird.

They had two daughters. Prudence Elizabeth, born 28 April 1843 in Warren County, Kentucky and Elizabeth Agnes, born 24 August, 1847, in Lamar County, Texas. One son, Thomas Sloss, was born 16 September 1845, in Warren County. Both daughters predeceased their parents and had no living offspring.

Thomas Sloss Baird married Josephine Augusta Thomas in Dallas County, Texas, 1 December, 1875. This marriage produced two sons and a daughter: Thomas Ellen Baird, born 3 September, 1876, Dallas County; Rosa Lea Baird, born 7 April, 1884, Bosque County, Texas; and John Barnett Baird, born 5 September 1886, Mills County, Texas. After managing stores in Walnut Springs and Mullin for several years, Thomas Sloss returned to Dallas where at least part of his family has lived since.