PROFILE of OLIVER S. BAIRD
8th MO Infantry (US) Company B
	Monument at Vicksburg National Military Park: -------------------------------- U.S. MISSOURI 8th INFANTRY ASSAULT MAY 22 1863 KILLED 10     WOUNDED 40 MISSING 1     TOTAL 51 --------------------------------

of the firm of Baird Bros., dealers in hardware and tinware at No. 1242 O street, is an intelligent, wide-awake man, whose fine business talents are gaining him an assured place among the leading merchants of Lincoln. Nebraska.
 
Was born in Clinton County, Pa., Nov. 22, 1840, and is a son of James H. Baird and Catherine Stout, natives respectively of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, his father born in 1804, and his mother in 1814.   His father was early in life a lumberman in Pennsylvania.   In 1841 he migrated to Knox County, Ill., and purchased 320 acres of land, and was extensively engaged in farming there until his death in 1866.   His good wife survived him several years, dying on the old homestead in Knox County, in 1882.
 
Our subject was reared on his father's farm in Elba Township, Knox County, Ill., and received his education in the common schools.   On the 22nd of Sep, 1861, he enlisted in the service as a private in Company B, 8th Missouri Infantry.   Oliver served under both Grant and Sherman; he was in the battle of Corinth, and in the first attempt to take Vicksburg.   He was at Arkansas Post, and also assisted his comrades in the victorious battle at Champion Hills.   He was present at the siege of Vicksburg, which commenced May 19, and ended on the 4th of July, 1863.   He then participated in the battle of Chattanooga.
 
After his retirement from the army, Mr. Baird returned to his old home in Knox County, Ill., and entered a commercial college at Chicago, where for two years, 1866 and 1867, he pursued a thorough coursed study, which well qualified him, for any business that he might adopt in after life.   After leaving school he opened a grocery store in Yates City, Illinois, then sold out and established himself in the dry-goods business at Gilson, Illinois.   He next entered into the grain and stock business there, and later carried on the same in Knoxville very successfully until 1879, when he went to Maquon, Knox County, and became a hardware merchant.
 
In 1883 (the year of his wife's death), Mr. Baird left the Prairie State to make his home in Lincoln, Nebraska.   He and his brother, who is also a man of much ability, leased the present building that they have occupied for seven years; they carry about $8,000 worth of stock, have a fine assortment of first-class hardware, and have built up a large trade for the firm of Baird Bros.
 
Mr. Baird was married, May 25, 1872, to Miss Sarah A. Pickerel, who was born in Knox County, in 1850, coming of an old pioneer family of Illinois, who went there from Virginia in 1838.   She was a woman of many graces of mind and heart, that made her beloved by all who came under her influence, and in her death, June 10, 1883, many friends mourned their loss.