Happy 137th birthday, Baird T Spalding
October 2nd marks the 137th anniversary of Baird T Spalding’s birth in Cohocton, New York in 1872, and the start of Spalding’s long, strange journey. The family house that Baird was born in still stands in North Cohocton, and the town historian was kind enough to send me a photograph of how it looks today.
Baird Spalding's birthplace in 1872
The area school was the North Cohocton-Atlanta Union School. Although there are no surviving records, it is likely that this is the school Baird attended as a youth.
North Cohocton Atlanta Union School
Tags: bairdspalding, bairdtspalding
Hi, glad to have found this website. Don’t have time now but will check back and follow along.
Hi Todd,
Could it perhaps be that Spalding modified this book:
“Great Masters of the Himalayas: Their Lives and Teachings”
by Rishi Singh Gherwal
Some passages have striking resemblances.
What’s your take on this?
Thanks for the comment CE. A number of people have mentioned that Vol 3 of Life and Teaching is very similar to Gherwal’s book. There is an oblique reference to Spalding plagiarizing a “Hindu author” in David Bruton’s biography of Spalding which is possibly a reference to this.
See http://www.bairdtspalding.org/2009/06/welcome/comment-page-1/#comment-86 for an earlier discussion on Gherwal.
If you’ve other examples, feel free to post them here. If anyone has a biography of Rishi Singh Gherwal, that would be very valuable. Gherwal may have had a family in the US, so it’s possible his children or grandchildren could shed more light on the mystery.