The confirmation of Spalding’s name at birth (Bayard Spaulding), and his family details enables us to examine the apocryphal stories about Spalding’s father and grandfather having a long history with India. Dr Neva Dell Hunter is quoted in Life and Teaching Vol 6 on “Baird T. Spalding III…his father Baird Spalding II and his grandfather.. Baird Spalding the first” , noting that the grandfather had been born in India. Spalding’s biographer David Bruton also makes similar claims in Baird T Spalding As I Knew Him about “John Spalding, grandfather of Baird T Spalding”, who lived the greater part of his life in India.

Baird T Spalding’s father was Stephen T Spaulding, a farmer in Cohocton, New York. Stephen Spaulding was born in 1840, the youngest of eleven children of Hiram Spaulding, an early settler in Atlanta. Stephen married Mary Hartwell in 1862 and raised his family on a seventy acre farm near the town of Cohocton, New York, where Baird was born in 1872. He grew hops and corn, and later potatoes. In 1891 the family moved to live on a farm on West Creek, near the town of Wheeler. Stephen Spaulding spent the winters in Florida where he operated a business shipping potato seed. He was known for the Spaulding Rose strain of potatoes, which remained popular until the 1930’s when it succumbed to a virus.

Stephen Spaulding was mechanically inclined and filed a number of patents on farm equipment during his life. US patent # 98,202 issued in 1869 is an agricultural cultivator invented by Spaulding. Baird was noted as having a mechanical aptitude later in life, and his father may have been his inspiration.

According to a genealogical article, Stephen Spaulding’s grandfather James Spaulding was born in England in 1772. There are no records showing a Baird Spalding I or II, or a John Spalding earlier in the family tree, and no record of a trip to India.

An alternative way to verify the history of the Spaulding family in India is the India Office Family History Search database, which contains extensive records for Europeans in India between 1600 and 1949.

Baird’s surname spelt as Spaulding only appears once in the entire India Office records, recording the marriage of an Alexander Spaulding in 1881. The Spalding variant spelling is more common as it is a popular English surname, but no variation of the name Baird Spalding appears. Two individuals named John Spalding appear in the database. The first, an infant born in 1780, would be too old to be Spalding’s grandfather. The second John Spalding was a British major in the 20th regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry, buried in 1826. Given that Stephen Spaulding was born in 1840, and that his genealogy can be firmly established via other sources, neither of these individuals are his father, or Baird Spalding’s grandfather.

As a result, both the Neva Dell Hunter and Bruton stories above about Baird’s Indian connections can clearly be considered fictional. Like Baird’s alleged English heritage or 1857 date of birth, it’s likely that these were simply stories concocted to support Life and Teachings.

Baird Spalding was the second youngest in a family of six children. Baird’s siblings included sisters Nettie, Hattie and Mary, and brothers Hiram and George. Unlike Baird, the rest of the Spaulding family remained in the New York area. Both Nettie and Hattie were members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which organized in Cohocton in 1898. Hiram and George remained in Cohocton as farmers their entire lives. After the death of Stephen Spaulding in 1906, Baird’s mother moved from West Creek to Avoca with her son Hiram. She died on January 27th 1923, still active at the age of 89, and was buried in the Avoca Highland Cemetery.

Baird’s older sister Mary Spaulding died at the young age of twenty, but the other Spaulding sisters went on to long lives like their mother. Baird’s oldest sister Nettie Spaulding married Charles Totten in 1890 and had three daughters Bessie, Mildred and Agnes. Nettie outlived all of her siblings, dying in 1958 at the age of 92.

In addition to the passport application, several obituaries and genealogical databases corroborate this information. The oldest is an 1880 census record which lists the entire Spaulding family in Cohocton. This is the earliest official record of Baird Spalding.

Spalding’s relationship with his family is an unknown quantity, but there are several hints that Spalding may have been estranged from them for some time. Baird spelt his fathers name incorrectly on his 1935 passport application, writing ‘Steven D Spaulding’, whereas the spelling on other documents is ‘Stephen T Spaulding’. Stephen Spaulding’s own 1906 obituary mentions the other Spaulding children but omits any mention of Baird. Finally, Mary Spaulding’s 1923 obituary notes her son ‘Bayard T’ as living in Alaska at the time, but Spalding had left Alaska at least a decade earlier.

The Department of State recently released Spalding’s 1935 passport application and an affidavit of birth signed by his brother. As discussed in my earlier blog post on Spalding’s biography, Baird was an American, born Oct 3rd 1872 in Cohocton,  New York. The passport application reveals a fascinating new twist.  Spalding was born with the name Bayard Spaulding, and the adoption of the nom de plume Baird T Spalding occurred decades later.

Despite initial skepticism that Bayard Spaulding was really New Age author Baird T Spalding, there is no doubt that this is the passport application of our subject. The application was filed in September 1935, just before Spalding left for his famous India Tour. Spalding’s photograph is attached, as well as his address at the time in San Francisco. His planned departure for India on the SS President Hoover on Oct 4th confirms it beyond a doubt.

By the 1890’s, Spalding had left New York for the gold fields of the Yukon and was going by the name William Spaulding. In 1899, Spalding was arrested in Dawson City, and a Canadian consul record lists him as William Spaulding, but notes incorrectly that he is a British subject. This may be the origin of the stories that Spalding was of British descent, discussed previously on this blog. In 1906, Spalding was working in Montana under his birth name Bayard T Spaulding, now with the added middle initial.

The first use of the surname Spalding by which the public would come to know him appears on the 21st of October 1910 in a rural Californian newspaper article from the Lassen Advocate, in which Spalding is claimed to be a professor from Columbia University.

B.T. Spalding a professor in the Columbia University, is in Susanville gathering data concerning soil and crop conditions in this section and will remain several weeks.

The trip to Susanville is meaningful in more ways than one. Close to California’s legendary Mount Shasta, Susanville was the home of Spalding’s future wife, Stella Stiles. They were married in October of the following year, and from this point Spalding continues to use the name Baird T Spalding almost exclusively.

There is no evidence that Spalding ever legally changed his name, and it is difficult to determine the logic behind which name he used. In addition to Baird Spalding and William Spalding,  David Bruton’s biography claims that he also used the name Baird T Grey.

After 1906, my research has only located a single instance of Spalding using his original birth name, and that is his 1935 passport application discussed above. Close examination of the hand written sections shows that Baird still signed his name as Spalding. On a birth affidavit signed by his brother Hiram Spaulding, the additional ‘u’ in Spaulding appears to have been added afterwards. Ironically Baird’s surname was often spelled by third parties as Spaulding even when he was using the Spalding variant, and it appears this mistake was made by Spalding himself as he had been using that name for decades.

Life and Teaching Volume 6,  published by DeVorss in 1996,  relates the following tale from Dr Neva Dell Hunter about Spalding’s family involvement with India.

Baird T. Spalding was in reality Baird T. Spalding III. His father was Baird Spalding  II and his grandfather, to whom he was very close, was Baird Spalding the first. Baird III always spoke of him as “Grandpappy” and it seems he really had been born in India.

A similar story appears in David Bruton’s 1954 biography Baird T Spalding As I Knew Him, although the details are slightly changed.

John Spalding, grandfather of Baird T Spalding, lived the greater part of his life in India. He was a devout follower of the Hindu teachings.

These two stories have become the foundation of much of the apocryphal information around Spalding,  implying that Spalding had a family connection to India, and that the voyage to India that led to Life and Teachings was inspired by the travels of his father or grandfather.

In the second part of this series on Baird T Spalding’s life, we’ll examine Spalding’s family history in detail and examine the truth of these stories.

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

Fellow mystic and DeVorss author David Bruton wrote about Spalding’s birth date in Baird T Spalding As I Knew Him, a self-published biography released in 1954. On May 26, 1952, Bruton attended a 95th birthday party for Spalding at the DeVorss offices in Los Angeles, and discussed the discrepancies in Spalding’s age with one of the guests. On writing the biography, Bruton noted the idiosyncrasies.

On two different occasions I asked him where he was born. The first time he told me in “upstate New York;” the second, “Spalding, England.” During one of his last public lectures a member of the audience asked where he was born and he answered, “In India.” He spoke with equal affection for the “old family home” in upstate New York, in Spalding, England and in Coconada, Madras Province, India.

As the executor of the Spalding estate, Bruton was given Spalding’s personal effects, including California and New Mexico drivers licenses, both bearing a birthdate of May 26, 1904. Bruton describes the reason for these as follows.

The story behind the story of his birthdate of May 26 1904 is that authorities refused to grant him a license to drive because of his age. The next time Spalding applied for a license, he removed that stumbling block. His New Mexico license was restricted to an an area within a few miles of his mining claims. He had little respect for restrictions of any kind and this one did not hamper him. He made many trips to Los Angeles driving on the restricted license and died in Arizona with it in his pocket.

Bruton concludes that Spalding was born in 1872 in upstate New York, but settles on the May 26th birth date, presumably due to the birthday party he attended on that date.

An article on Baird Spalding in J Gordon Melton’s Biographical Dictionary of American Cult and Sect Leaders notes the controversy as follows.

Although he claimed an age of ninety-five at the time of his death, thus setting a birthdate in the 1850s, more recent research has established that he was born in upstate New York in 1872. Spaulding hid much of his early life, even from his close friends, in an effort to add to the aura of mystery about his contacts with the “masters.”

My research has yet to yield a US passport record for Spalding, and birth certificates were not issued prior to 1880 in Steuben County, New York. However, the 1880 US Census and the 1936 immigration record stand as the most authoritative data so far, and add support to Bruton and Melton’s conclusions. The evidence points to Spalding being born Oct 3, 1872, in North Cohocton, New York.  By the time Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East was published by DeVorss in 1935, Spalding and DeVorss promoted an alternative biography for Spalding, perhaps as a promotional gimmick, or perhaps to obscure Spalding’s true life story. Other details about Spalding that have been overlooked will be explored in future posts.

For now, let the record be clear. When a sudden heart attack ended his life in an Arizona motel on March 18, 1953, Baird Spalding, a native of upstate New York, was eighty years old.

Spalding is often claimed to have been ninety or older at the time of his death in 1953, adding to the mystique around his writings on immortal masters. A Los Angeles Times obituary published on March 21st, 1953, demonstrates the typical claims.

Funeral services will be conducted at Tempe, Ariz tomorrow at 3pm for Baird T Spalding, 95, research engineer, world traveler and author who died in the Arizona city last Thursday.

A similarly inaccurate obituary was published a week later in the Logansport Pharos-Tribune of Indiana.

Rochester friends have received word of the death of Dr Baird Spaulding, age 107, noted scientist, author and world traveler, who was found dead in bed at Arona, Arizona, Thursday.

Neither obituary agrees on Spalding’s age or even the spelling of his surname. In addition to advancing his age over the century mark, the Logansport obituary adds a doctorate and scientific prowess to Spalding’s achievements.

Unlike reclusive authors such as Thomas Pynchon, one of the challenges in researching Spalding is that both the author and his publisher Douglas DeVorss did not correct this type of error or avoid discussions about Spalding’s personal history and background. On the contrary, Spalding and DeVorss appear to have used an unusual life story and long lifespan as a way to create and sustain interest in the Spalding books.

Many of the biographical details that contradict the historical record come directly from the books published by DeVorss. A contemporary example can be found listed with Spalding’s books on the DeVorss corporate website, and duplicated ad infinitum throughout the Internet.

Born in England, at age four he went to India. At age seventeen he finished the University and went to California were he stayed two years. He then traveled to Heidelberg, Germany and studied for eight years and then returned to California for post-graduate work in Archaeology at Berkeley and Stanford.

DeVorss claims an English heritage for Spalding, and adds a residence in Germany and India followed by graduate work at Berkeley and Stanford.

We will return to the topic of the correct spelling of Spalding’s name and his academic qualifications in a later post, but for this subject, consider the following conflicting information about Spalding’s date and place of birth, listed in rough order of each record.

Examining each of these documents in detail reveals the pattern of inconsistencies. Most official documents, and those that predate Spalding’s publishing career reflect a birthplace of 1872 in New York. Information propagated by DeVorss after their publication of Spalding’s books in 1935 show the earlier 1857 birth date, and a birthplace of England. For an interim period, Spalding used the correct 1872 birth date but claimed an English heritage.

The glaring contrary example is Spalding’s March 1953 Arizona death certificate, which lists Douglas DeVorss as the informant but contradicts the English birthplace claimed by the DeVorss publishing company. This suggests that when providing information for an official document, Douglas DeVorss knew that Spalding had been born in New York rather than England, but may not have known that Spalding had created a fictional 1857 birth date prior to his involvement with DeVorss.

In part 2 of this topic, I’ll write about David Bruton’s thoughts on Baird Spalding’s origins in Baird T Spalding As I Knew Him, the only independent biography published to date of Spalding, and pin down the exact details of Spalding’s birth.

*This article has been updated since it was first published to include the US passport records released in December 2009 by the Department of State