The Baker Family

In the late 19th and early 20th century, at least three generations of the Baker family were an integral part of the Michigan Agricultural College and East Lansing history. Many Bakers were graduates of the College and a large percentage of them achieved national prominence in their professions.

The story begins with Lieutenant Luther Byron Baker and his brother, Major Joseph Stannard Baker, who both served in the United States Secret Service during the Civil War. The service was, at the time, headed by their first cousin General Lafayette C. Baker. These three Bakers seem predestined to play a role in American history, for they had as their paternal great grandfather Remember Baker, captain in the Green Mountain Boys, whose commanding officer—and no less than first cousin—was Ethan Allen.

Gen. Lafayette Baker led the group responsible for tracking down President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, and all three Bakers joined the cavalry detachment in the hunt. On April 26, 1865, it was Lt. Luther Baker who held a mortally wounded Booth in his arms as the killer uttered his last words. This moment of historical chance was something Luther was able to parlay into a modicum of minor celebrity for the rest of his life.

The two brothers Luther and Joseph came to Lansing “at the close of the Civil War,” and both were married in 1868.

Luther Byron Baker married Helen M. Davis, formerly of Massachusetts, and the couple had four children:

• Arthur Davis Baker (1869–1953, M.A.C. ’89), “a well-known business man of Lansing,” president of Michigan Millers Insurance Company, still in business today.
• Luther Henry Baker (1872–1944, M.A.C. ’93), “associated with Arthur,” and principal of Michigan Millers Ins. Co. (1919); Director, East Lansing Realty Company; Mayor of East Lansing, 1925–1928.¹
• Lucelia “Lu” Baker (1876–1944) attended M.A.C. in the first year of the Women’s Course (1896–97) but did not graduate; instead she became an important member of its community as the wife of Wilbur O. Hedrick. They were married August 2, 1898 at Lansing, and (following the death of a son in infancy) had four daughters, all alumnae: Helen (M.A.C. ’23), Hester (M.S.C. ’26), Amy (M.S.C. ’28), and Marian (M.S.C. ’33).²
• Helen Davis Baker (1876–1914), twin sister of Lucelia. This author has found little about her except that she died young (age 37) at Grand Rapids, of pneumonia—but her death certificate states that a contributing factor was “insanity.”

Joseph Stannard Baker married Alice Potter and they had three children before relocating their family to St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, where they raised three more. Taken as a whole, this is an impressive group:

• Ray Stannard Baker (1870–1946, M.A.C. ’89). Famous “muckraker” for McClure’s magazine. Co-founder of The American Magazine, which led to him “becoming the first prominent journalist to examine America’s racial divide.” Awarded honorary LL.D. by M.A.C. in 1917. Publicity agent for the League of Nations Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919, and Pulitzer prizewinner as Woodrow Wilson’s biographer (1940). Married in 1896 to Jessie Irene Beal (M.A.C. ’90), daughter of William Beal and one of the Twenty-One. Namesake of Baker Hall at M.S.U. and Grayson Hall (after his pen name David Grayson) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

• Charles Fuller Baker (1872–1927, M.A.C. ’91), studied under A. J. Cook. Dean of the College of Agriculture, University of Phillipines at Los Baños, from 1918 to his death. Though he studied and taught agronomy, he was an avid entomologist by avocation; his personal collection of over 300,000 insects now resides in the Smithsonian Institution. (Also, a noted vandal.)
• Henry Danio “Harry D.” Baker (1874–1970). Attended M.A.C. 1890–92 but did not graduate. Manager of Baker Land and Title Company in St. Croix Falls for 72 years, and president of nine banks.
• Charles Dwight Baker, the only one of the six siblings that is known not to have attended M.A.C. He was born in 1876, the first to be born at St. Croix Falls. He attended Macalaster College (St. Paul, Minn.) and died of brain tumor at 29.

• Hugh Potter Baker (1878–1950, M.A.C. ’01). U.S. Forestry Service, 1901–1904. Professor of Forestry, Penn State College, 1907–1912. Second and fourth Dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, 1912–1920 and 1930–1933. Finally and most significantly, President of Massachusetts State College (now UMass Amherst) 1933–1947. Namesake of Baker Laboratory at Syracuse and a dormitory at UMass Amherst.
• James Frederick “J. Fred” Baker (1880–1934, M.A.C. ’02). Professor of Forestry M.A.C. 1907–1914 (following the death of Professor Bogue, and himself followed by Chittenden). New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, 1914–1919.

After the death of Alice Potter Baker in 1883, Joseph Baker remarried and had four more children by his second wife, Mary Brown. They all attended Carleton College in Minnesota.

According to one secondhand source, “In 1941, Baker Woodlot, which had originally been called South Woodlot [and later Farm Lane Woodlot], received its name to honor two brothers who attended the university, James Fred Baker and Henry Lee Baker (Beach and Stevens 1979).” However, Henry Lee is not included by multiple sources regarding the ten children of Joseph Stannard Baker, and therefore is unlikely to have been the brother of J. Fred. Henry Lee Baker graduated from M.A.C. in 1911 and was important in forestry (particularly for Florida, where he served as the first Director of that state’s Forest Service), but is not confirmed to be of the same Baker family.³

1. Minutes, 8 Aug 1893, p. 38. ↩︎
2. Yakeley (1900), p. 102. Minutes, 25 May 1923, p. 561; 18 Jun 1926, p. 677; 18 May 1933, p. 1055. MSC Record, Feb 1929, p. 19. ↩︎
3. MSU Fisheries and Wildlife Dept. MAC Record, 4 Jan 1918, p. 7. ↩︎