Edward Abraham Bird 

Edward Abraham Bird, vice president and manager of the Addis Ice Company, which is engaged in the manufacturing and distributing of ice at Addis, West Baton Rouge Parish, was born in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, January 31, 1872, and is the son of Abraham Thompson Bird and Julia (Von Puhl) Bird, both natives of the state of Missouri, where the former was born at Birds Point in the year 1810, and where the latter was born in the City of St. Louis, in 1827. The parents passed the closing years of their lives on their fine homestead place, Shelter Plantation, near Mark, West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, where the father died in 1896 at the patriarchal age of eighty-six years, and where the widowed mother died in 1913 at the age of eighty-six years, both having been devout communicants of the Catholic Church. Mrs. Bird was a daughter of Henry Von Puhl, who was one of the leading merchants of St. Louis, Missouri, at the time of his death, he having there been the executive head of the Von Puhl Saugrain Company. Henry Von Puhl was a son of Dietrich Von Puhl, a knight of the High Ducal Order of Hunters in Wurttemberg, Germany, and general and captain of the guards at the ducal court on the maternal side. Edward A. Bird, immediate subject in this review, is a great-grandson of Dr. Antoine Francois Saugrain, who attained the distinction as the first scientist of the western part of the great national domain of the United States, he having been a contemporary and friend of Benjamin Franklin in his electrical experiments. To him is attributed also the manufacturing of matches that were used by the explorers Lewis and Clark on their great and historic expedition across the continent to the Pacific Coast, these matches having effectively served their purpose on the far distant Columbia River fully a generation before similar igniting mediums were devised and used in London and Boston. The Saugrain family was one of distinct prominence in French history. From 1518 up to the time of the reign of the great Napoleon, the head of the Saugrain family in France served as librarian to the French kings. John Saugrain having been given this distinguished preferment by King Charles IX, in 1518. Mr. Bird is aligned in the ranks of the democratic party, and while he has had no ambition for public office, he gave three years of effective service as a member of the Board of Education of West Baton Rouge Parish. In the neighboring Village of Brushy he and his wife are active communicants of the Catholic Church of St. John the Baptist, and at Plaquemire, Iberville Parish, he is a member of Plaquemire Council No. 970, Knights of Columbus. He was formerly affiliated also with the Improved Order of Red Men and the Woodmen of the World. Just north of Addis is situated the beautiful modern home of Mr. and Mrs. Bird, and the handsome house stands on an attractive tract of twenty-six acres. At Brushy, on the 27th of December, 1894, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Bird and Miss Lea Bernard, daughter of William L. and Belida (Landry) Bernard, who reside at Mark, Mr. Bernard being a successful planter and also being cashier of the Bank of West Baton Rouge at Port Allen. To Mr. and Mrs. Bird have been born five children: Julia Louisa is the wife of Theodore Landry, manager of the truck department of the Standard Oil Company of Louisiana at Baton Rouge; Verna M. is the wife of Felix Paille, who is associated with his father in the ownership and management of Eatmore Bakery in the City of Baton Rouge; Edward Abram, Jr., is chief engineer of the Addis Ice Company; Leonard was killed in a school automobile-truck accident in 1921 when sixteen years of age; and Lea M. is the youngest member of the parental home circle.
 Published by the American Historical Society, Inc., A History of Louisiana, vol. 2, by Henry E. Chambers, 1925
(Courtesy of Sheryl Kelso)