Priscilla Baird
American teacher
Priscilla Baird (1828–1904) was a pioneering teacher in Missouri and Illinois and an advocate for girls' education. She began her career in Shelbyville, Missouri in 1851. She then taught at Liberty Female College and Lancaster schools before relocating to Illinois during the civil war and teaching at the Springfield High School. Returning to Missouri, she taught at Ingleside College in Palmyra, Missouri and at Hardin College in Mexico, Missouri. After completing nearly thirty years of teaching, she founded the Baird College in 1885, where she remained until her retirement in 1897.
Early life
Priscilla A. Davis was born in 1828 in Shelby County, Kentucky to Harriet M. (née Bell) and Samuel E. Davis. She studied with private tutors in her youth and attended Julia A. Tevis's Science Hill Female Academy in Shelbyville, Kentucky. At the age of fourteen, she was converted to the Baptist faith through her grandfather Francis Davis and an elder, George Waller. Waller also performed Davis' marriage ceremony on March 12, 1846, when she married Jesse K. Baird in Shelby County. Five years after their marriage, the couple moved to Missouri, along with their three children: M. Belle (born 1847), Thomas D. (born 1849) and Itonia J. (born 1851).
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This entry incorporates text from “Priscilla Baird” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.