William Raimond Baird (1848–1917) was the namesake of

Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities ''Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities'' was a compendium of fraternities and sororities in the United States and Canada, published between 1879 and 1991.Lurding, Carroll and Becque, Fran. Almanac of Fraternities and Sororities'' Urban ...

and publisher of its early editions.

Biography

He was born in 1848 and in 1878 he graduated from

Stevens Institute of Technology Stevens Institute of Technology is a private research university in Hoboken, New Jersey. Founded in 1870, it is one of the oldest technological universities in the United States and was the first college in America solely dedicated to mechanical ...

Hoboken, New Jersey Hoboken ( ; Unami: ') is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 60,417. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 58,690 i ...

. He exhaustively researched other organizations seeking a suitable partner to merge with his own

Alpha Sigma Chi Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whic ...

fraternity. He selected

Beta Theta Pi Beta Theta Pi (), commonly known as Beta, is a North American social fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. One of North America's oldest fraternities, as of 2022 it consists of 144 active chapters in the Unite ...

, which absorbed ΑΣΧ in 1879. As no authoritative resource on the subject existed, Baird published his research for the benefit of the public as ''American College Fraternities''. He continued to refine the work, publishing a total of eight editions under his name as author. In addition to his membership in local Alpha Sigma Chi that became a chapter of Beta Theta Pi, Baird was a member of

Phi Delta Phi Phi Delta Phi () is an international legal honor society and the oldest legal organization in continuous existence in the United States. Phi Delta Phi was originally a professional fraternity but became an honor society in 2012. The fraternity ...

(international legal honor society) and

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

(engineering honor society).As profiled i
a blog post by Fran Becque on "Fraternity History & More", dated June 17, 2012
accessed 31 Jan 2021. Baird died in 1917.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Baird, William Raimond Stevens Institute of Technology alumni 1848 births 1917 deaths