page_title: Henry S. Baird
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Henry S. Baird / Biography
caption_attribution_description: The w:Baird Law Office at w:Heritage Hill State Historic Park, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This file was uploaded with Commonist.
context_page_description: Henry Samuel Baird Jr. was an Irish American immigrant, Wisconsin pioneer, lawyer, and politician. He was the first Attorney General of the Wisconsin Territory, appointed by territorial governor Henry Dodge. He is known as "Father of the Wisconsin Bar," and was said to be the first practicing lawyer in the Wisconsin Territory.
context_section_description: Born in Dublin, Ireland, Baird moved with his family, at age five, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked in various law firms in Ohio and Pennsylvania—including the law firm of the future governor of Ohio Reuben Wood. Baird moved to Mackinac Island, in the Michigan Territory, in 1822, where he became a teacher.  He moved to Green Bay in 1824, which, at the time, was also part of the Michigan Territory.
  In Green Bay, Baird was admitted to the bar in a special ceremony in the courtroom of territorial judge James Duane Doty, and became the first practicing attorney in what would become the Wisconsin Territory. Baird was involved with Indian affairs, negotiating land transactions as a counsel for the Menominee and Ho-Chunk tribes in 1830, he volunteered as a quartermaster with the militia during the Black Hawk War in 1832, and was secretary to U.S. negotiator Henry Dodge at the Treaty of the Cedars in 1836, and was secretary to the council at Lake Poygan in 1848; Baird also served in the Wisconsin Territorial Council, the upper house of the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature, and was the first president of the territorial council; he also served in the first Wisconsin Constitutional Convention of 1846. After Wisconsin statehood, he was the Whig Party nominee for Governor of Wisconsin in 1853, and served as mayor of Green Bay for two terms, in 1861 and 1862.
caption: Baird Law Office at Heritage Hill
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