William Elsey Connelley

“ Baird has taken no active part in public affairs, but like all good business men has accepted his share of the responsibilities of citizenship and is always eager to assist in the advancement of movements making for the general welfare, for the advancement of education or for the betterment of civic conditions. He is a thirty-second degree Mason and a Knight Templar and Shriner and has filled most of the chairs, and is also a member of organizations of railroad men. ”

“ He was more interested in mechanical things than in learning facts from books, and his father, recognizing this fact, apprenticed him to become a patternmaker, but a little later the youth decided to become a boilermaker and sheet iron worker and followed that trade for about six years. ”

“ Baird was called to the shops of the Wisconsin Central & Northern Pacific, at Waukesha, Wisconsin, where he held the position of general foreman boilermaker for four years, and then, in 1890, was called to Topeka by John Player, who was superintendent of motive power of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, and became general foreman of the shop. ”