Dr. Benjamin F. BAIRD, a physician of Fayette County, was born in the county April 27, 1836, and is a son of Capt. Charles and Nancy (Robards) BAIRD, both natives of Robertson County, Tenn., and of Scotch-Irish descent coming from the house of Stuarts.  The father was born in 1796 and died in Fayette County in 1871.  The mother was born in 1814 and died in 1867.  The parents married in Robertson County.  In 1832 they moved to Fayette County and settled in the Fifteenth District, twelve miles south of Somerville, where they spent the rest of their lives.  The father engaged in agricultural pursuits all of his life.  For a number of years he was captain of the State militia.  He was a cultivated man and taught school for seven years when first grown; he was a kind, upright man, a loyal Democrat and with his wife a member of the Primitive Baptist Church.  Dr. B.F. BAIRD was the fourth of eight children; after receiving a good education in the fall of 1854 he took his first course of lectures at the Memphis Medical College, then returned home and practiced a year, and then returned to college and graduated in the spring of 1856, and located in Fayette County near his old home, where he soon built up a large practice and was regarded as one of the leading physicians of the county.  

In 1850 he went to Arkansas and located in Dallas County near Tulip where he practiced medicine for three years, then moved his family back to Fayette County and he entered the Confederate Army as surgeon of the Fifteenth Tennessee Regiment of Calvary in Forrest’s command and served until the war closed.  In 1865 he resumed his practice in Fayette County.  In October 1878, he moved to Hickory Valley, a little town in Hardeman County,  and continued the practice of medicine until 1885, when he returned to the Fifteenth District in Fayette County where he now lives.  Dr. BAIRD is a successful and eminent physician; he owns 350 acres of land in Fayette and Hardeman Counties.  Dr. BAIRD has been married twice, first to Julia MITCHELL, born in North Carolina in 1840 and died in Fayette County September 25, 1876; they were married November 27, 1859, and January 10, 1877, he married Julia EUBANK, born in Hardeman County November 13, 1860  Eight sons were born to the first marriage – three are dead – and two sons and a daughter were born to the second marriage; the two sons died.  Dr. BAIRD is a Democrat, and with his wife holds membership with the Methodist Episcopal Church South; the first wife also belonged to that church.   He ranks as one of the substantial, influential citizens of Fayette County. 

Source:  Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee, 1887.