John Baird (17 February 1799 – 29 November 1861), was a Scottish

divine Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.divine

Life

John Baird was the eldest son of the Rev. James Baird, who was successively minister of

Legerwood Legerwood is a village by the Eden Water, in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, near Lauder, near the Southern Upland Way. Legerwood Kirk is outside the village and has been there since at least 1127. Places nearby include Boon Farm, Gor ...

, Eccles, and Swinton, all in

Berwickshire Berwickshire ( gd, Siorrachd Bhearaig) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in south-eastern Scotland, on the English border. Berwickshire County Council existed from 1890 until 1975, when the area became part of th ...

. John was born at Eccles, and educated at the

Whitsome Whitsome is a small rural village in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland, on the B6437, near Duns, Fogo, Ladykirk, Leitholm and Swinton. Place-name meaning Whitsome derives from Old English ''hwit-husum'' "at the white houses". This may r ...

and Kelso grammar schools. Later he proceeded to the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

, where, in 1823, he founded the

Plinian Society The Plinian Society was a club at the University of Edinburgh for students interested in natural history. It was founded in 1823. Several of its members went on to have prominent careers, most notably Charles Darwin who announced his first scient ...

for the study of natural history, and was its first president. Going to Ireland in 1825, he was for some time engaged by the Irish Evangelical Society as one of their preachers. In 1829, he was ordained minister of

Yetholm Yetholm is the parish that contained the villages of Kirk Yetholm and Town Yetholm in the east of the former county of Roxburghshire, nowadays in the Scottish Borders The Scottish Borders ( sco, the Mairches, 'the Marches'; gd, Crìoc ...

Roxburghshire Roxburghshire or the County of Roxburgh ( gd, Siorrachd Rosbroig) is a historic county and registration county in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. It borders Dumfriesshire to the west, Selkirkshire and Midlothian to the north-west, and Berw ...

, the eventual place of his death. A colony of gipsies, as they were then called, had long been settled at

Kirk Yetholm Kirk Yetholm ('kirk yet-ham') is a village in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland, southeast of Kelso and less than west of the border. The first mention is of its church in the 13th century. Its sister town is Town Yetholm which lies ...

. Baird set himself resolutely to make them Christians and, in the eyes of many at the time, useful members of society as a result. The work was done in connection with a society formed in Edinburgh for the 'Reformation of the Gipsies in Scotland,' and it met with a considerable amount of success. Baird wrote the 'Scottish Gipsies' Advocate,' Edinburgh, 1839, and contributed an 'Account of the Parish of Yetholm' to the '

New Statistical Account of Scotland The ''Statistical Accounts of Scotland'' are a series of documentary publications, related in subject matter though published at different times, covering life in Scotland in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The ''Old (or First) Statistical Ac ...

.' A memoir of him, by W. Baird (London, 1862), contains a list of words used by the gipsies of Yetholm, compared with Grellman's list of the continental gipsy language, and the corresponding words in Hindustani.

References

;Attribution 1799 births 1861 deaths People educated at Kelso High School, Scotland 19th-century Ministers of the Church of Scotland 19th-century Scottish Presbyterian ministers {{Scotland-reli-bio-stub