Baird Brothers (Beadon and Zebulon Baird)

"Beadon and Zebulon Baird were among the old inhabitants and were useful and respectable men, leaving descendants worth their sires.  They were the first merchants in Buncombe and 'imported' the first 'Jewsharps,' which were then as great a wonder as a Giraffe would be now.  James M. Smith told the writer of their giving him one, when a small boy, which pleased him more than any present he ever received.  'Gourd fiddles' were then in vogue, 'puncheon floors,' and 'corn-stalk bows!'  The Messrs. Baird carried up the first four wheeled wagon ever seen in Buncombe, which was in 1793, and was then a great curiosity; 'slides' or 'sleds' having been in connection with 'trucks' or 'truckles wheels' the useful and ornamental vehicles in that rolling region of country, up to that time; one horse carts were the next family carriage luxury; they brought that wagon across the South Carolina or 'Saluda Gap,' which was opened by Col. Earle for the State of South Carolina at the sum of four thousand dollars....The Messrs. Baird have long been sleeping with the silent dead upon the blue hills of their balmy days." (1858. Bennett, D. K. The Chronology of North Carolina, pp. 102, 103.)

Bibliography

  Bennet, Daniel K.  The Chronology of North Carolina  New York:  J. M. Edney, 1858.