William Raimond Baird (1848–1917) was the namesake of '' Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities'' 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 university, 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 de ...

Hoboken, New Jersey Hoboken ( ; ) is a City (New Jersey), city in Hudson County, New Jersey, Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Hoboken is part of the New York metropolitan area and is the site of Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub. As of the ...

. He exhaustively researched other organizations seeking a suitable partner to merge with his own 5-chapter regional fraternity Alpha Sigma Chi. He selected

Beta Theta Pi Beta Theta Pi (), commonly known as Beta, is a North American social Fraternities and sororities in North America, fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. One of North America's oldest fraternities, , it consist ...

, which absorbed 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 Alpha Sigma Chi, which the year after his graduation became the ''Sigma chapter'' of Beta Theta Pi, Baird was a member of

Phi Delta Phi Phi Delta Phi (), commonly known as Phid or PDP, is an international legal honor society and the oldest legal organization in continuous existence in the United States. Founded in 1869 at the University of Michigan as a professional 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

* Stevens Institute of Technology alumni 1848 births 1917 deaths {{historian-stub