Berkeley County, West Virginia         Biography of John Griffith BAIR

This biography was submitted by Elizabeth Burns,
E-mail address:  <burns@asu.edu>

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History of Montana, Helen F. Sanders, Vol. 3, page 1438, 1913

John Griffith Bair

John Griffith Bair was born December 4, 1858 at Gerrardstown in
Berkeley County West Virginia. He belongs to a family which has
been in America since the early times of colonial settlement and
while so far as known none of its members attained to conspicuous
prominence in public life, it is also possible to assert that none
were without the qualifications of honest character and excellent
industry, so that they led careers quiet but worthy and were people
of usefulness intheir community and highly respected by all who
knew them.

The founder of the family in America was John Bair who came from
Germany about 1760, living in the colony of Pennsylvania. When the
Revolutionary War came on he engaged on the side of the colonists
in their struggle for independence. The parents of Mr. Bair were
William and Eleanor Virginia (Griffith) Bair. The father was born
at New Bloomfield, in Perry County Pennsylvania, whence he moved
into Berkeley County Virginia about 1855. His occupation was that
of blacksmith. He was a member of the Lutheran Church and his death
occurred at Bedford, in Lawrence County Indiana in 1881. The mother,
who was born in Berkeley County, West Virginia, a descendant of the
old family Griffiths on her father's side and that of Seiberts on
her mother's side, is now living in Bedford Indiana.

John Griffith Bair engaged in teaching school for a number of years
in Indiana, then in 1889 came out to Montana in what is now Teton
County where he has been involved in the practice of law in the
town of Choteau. On the first day of September 1886 at Heltonville
Indiana, Mr. Bair married Miss Mary Ramsey. They have no children
of their own but have in their home their nephew and adopted child,
the son of Mrs. Bair's brother Arthur Bailey Ramsey who was born in
Walla Walla Washington in April 1905.