William Baillie Baird papers

William Baillie Baird was born in Ayshire, Scotland, in 1846. He came to the United States in 1866 and was naturalized in 1876. He married Ruth L. Womsley in 1879; there were six children born to the marriage, three of whom lived to adulthood.

The Bairds settled in western Maryland and William Baird found work in the coal mines at Eckhart. It was at Eckhart that he, presumably, became a member of the Knights of Labor. During the great coal strike of 1882, Baird was among the K of L strikers at the Frostburg, Maryland, mines.

In the years following the strike, the K of L experienced severe organizational loss in western Maryland. Baird secured an organizer's commission from the K of Lin these years and, while attempting to revive defunct K of L locals, he also agitated for the National Federation of Mine and Mine Laborers. In 1886 this organization met in conference with the Mine and Mine Laborers National District No. 135, K of L, which led to the founding of the United Mine Workers of America in 1890. Baird's organizational affiliation presumably followed this development, although in 1898 he still carried his K of L organizer's commission. According to Baird's own claim, he was in attendance at the founding convention of the American Federation of Labor [Baird to Powers, April, 8, 1927].

He joined with several former Knights and UMWA members in 1925 to promote Robert W. Price as the founder of Labor Day. Price had come to the United States from England and had worked in the western Maryland coal mines with Baird. He was blacklisted after the 1882 strike and went to work near the coal mines near Weir, Kansas. According to Baird and the Robert W. Price National Memorial Association, Price was the first to formally argue for a national holiday for American labor. This was within his K of L assembly as early as 1878. In his retirement Baird lived in Cumberland, Maryland. He died in 1939 at the age 83.

Sources

The William Baillie Baird Papers Mrs. Ruth Baird Thomson to Katherine Vogel, March 1, 1986. Harvey, Katherine A. The Best-Dressed Miners; Life and Labor in the Maryland Coal Region, 1835-1910. Ithaca: Cornell University, Press, 1969.

Fink, Gary A., ed. Labor Unions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977.