The following letter was written by Henry Baird (1824-1863), the son of William Baird (1765-1863) and Nancy Harbison (1787-1855). Henry’s father emigrated from Northern Ireland and settled in Pennsylvania where most of Henry’s numerous siblings remained and raised families of their own. However, Henry—born in 1824 in Pleasant Gap, Centre county, Pennsylvania—settled in the South prior to 1850. In the US Census of 1850, he was enumerated in Mobile, Alabama, with his wife, Lecetta McKibben (1828-1892) and their infant child, James. The child would die four years later but they had two more boys, Edgar (b. 1854) and Robert (b. 1856) by the time this letter was penned in May 1861.
Henry does not say anything about his employment but the 1859 Mobile City Directory identifies his as a steamboat carpenter with a residence at 77 South Scott Street. By the spring of 1862, Henry appears to have been employed by the Park and Lyons Machine Shop in Mobile. It was at that time that riverboat captain James McClintock, engineer Baxter Watson, and lawyer Horace Lawson Hunley scrapped their initial attempts in New Orleans to develop a submarine for the Confederacy and moved its operations to Mobile where they began the construction of a second submarine in the Park & Lyons Machine Shop. This submerged vessel propelled by a hand crank came to be called the American Diver. After this vessel sunk in Mobile Bay, the machine shop began work on a third submarine they dubbed the Hunley. When it was finished, they transported it by train to Charleston, South Carolina, with the hope that they might be able to sink ships of the Federal blockade by detonating a torpedo attached to a long spar on the front of the submarine.
During a trial run of this vessel, manned by volunteers from crews of Confederate ships, the Hunley sank when it began to dive before the hatch was closed, killing five of the eight on board. A few weeks later, after the submarine had been raised, she was outfitted with a new crew that included Hunley (the designer himself) and members of the machine shop that built it—including Henry Baird. Unfortunately the submarine sank again, killing all eight crew members. The monument erected to the memory of Hunley’s second crew includes Henry but his name was incorrectly spelled “Beard.”
Of course the Hunley was raised again and a third crew was successful in attaching a torpedo to the Union warship Housatonic and sinking it near Charleston but that crew never made it back to safety after detonating the torpedo. It sank too and rested on the ocean bottom until it was discovered in 1995, retrieved, preserved and now displayed in a museum in Charleston.
Several of Henry’s brothers served in the Union army during the Civil War—one of whom, Robert Baird–is mentioned in the letter: “Tell Robert that I never want to hear of [his] joining the Black Republic army against the South,” Henry wrote his father. But Robert did join the Union army and served as a sergeant in the 49th Pennsylvania Infantry until he died a prisoner of war in Libby Prison in August 1862.
[Note: This letter was made available for transcription & publication on Spared & Shared by John Baird, a descendant of the family.]
T R A N S C R I P T I O N
Mobile, [Alabama]
May 14, 1861
Dear Father,
I now take up my pen to address a few lines to you in answer to one that I received from John. I was glad to hear that your health was better. It is so seldom that we hear from that part of the country that we never know any of you are [sick] until they are well again. We are all well at present. James was at my house the last two nights. His family are all well at present. Edgar and Robert are going to school; Edgar reading and studying geography [and] Robert commencing to read. I had a letter from John F. McKibben. The friends in that country are all well. Emeline Baird commenced teaching school on the fifteenth of April. He said that she looks better this Spring than he ever seen her.
When John was here last winter, he had a paper come to him regular—the Freeport Bulletin. They still come to me. In looking over one of them, I find that Robinson has been elected Squire of Dacotah. He has still got the post office. Father-in-law is building a barn this summer.
Nancie Jane’s husband, [Henry DeForest] Bassett 1 is about to build a floating battery for the Confederate States if he gets the contract. It will cost about seventy-five or eighty thousand. It is thought to [be] one of the greatest constructions of the kind ever gotten up. Tell Robert that I never want to hear of [his] joining the Black Republic army against the South.
I must draw my letter to a close. Lucetta and the children join me in sending our love to you and all enquiring friends. — Henry & Lucetta Baird
To our beloved father.
1 Nancie Jane Baird (1841-1915) was married to Henry DeForest Bassett (1825-1868) at James Baird’s East Fowl River, Mobile county, Alabama, on 3 June 1858.
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