Viola Brainerd Baird

A Quest for Wild Violets

Cover of Wild Violets of North America

I bought Wild Violets of North America by Viola Brainerd Baird several years ago when I was intent on finding and buying every book written about the genus Viola. (And yes, I am grateful that I didn’t fall in love with roses, or some other more popular flower, which have had hundreds of books written about them. )

One of the prettiest of my violet books is Wild Violets of North America.

Just looking through it, I’m amazed at both the beautiful pictures but also the descriptions of all the violets. This is not your average “field guide” type book, but a beautiful, large book that could have only been written by someone who loved violets of all kinds. Someone who grew up with a parent also obsessed with violets, perhaps?

Her Biography

Viola Brainerd Baird was born on August 5, 1875, the daughter of Ezra Brainerd, who was at one time the president of Middlebury College in Vermont, which she attended and graduated from in 1898. After that, she moved to California and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California in 1902. In 1910, married Dudley Baird. They had one son, born around 1913.

The 1940 census shows she lived in Berkeley, California, and was a widow. She died in 1944, just a few years after her book was published.

Viola, who had a brother and four sisters, plus two step-sisters, shared her father’s interest in violets. How could she not? Her father named her after his favorite flower. Or was she named after her mother, Frances Viola Rockwell?

Her Book

Wild Violets of North America was published in 1942 and is a beautiful book with watercolor illustrations of every violet found in North America painted by F. Schuyler Mathews.

The University of California Press printed 1,000 copies of this book, and each copy is numbered and signed by the author. My personal copy is number 550 and came with the original purchase receipt slipped between the pages. Whoever first bought it paid $10 in 1945, which is around $172 today. Someone must have really loved violets to spend that much on a book.

Viola wrote in the acknowledgments of her book,

“Of the many reference books I have consulted, my father’s Violets of North America, a publication of the University of Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station, has been the most useful. It has not only served as my inspiration but has been my constant guide and source of information as well.”

To gather information for her book, Viola traveled all over the western United States collecting violet specimens. She relied on friends and acquaintances to collect the violets in the eastern United States. For every violet, she wrote a description and personally supervised the artist’s drawing of it, paying particular attention to the colors used.

She ends the preface of the book with another nod to her father.

“It is my sincerest hope that it may stand not only as a contribution to science, but also as a monument to Ezra Brainerd, who started the undertaking and whose contributions to our knowledge of the North American violets have made it possible.”

Questions

As usual, with the resources I have available, I sometimes just find snippets of information about these Lost Ladies of Garden Writing and end up with unanswered questions.

What did Viola study in college? I don’t think it was that common for women to go to college like she did, especially a college on the other side of the country from where she lived.

Is there a picture of Viola anywhere on the internet? I couldn’t find one!

What was it like to travel during the 1930s through the western United States in search of violets?

We are likely never to know the answers, though had we been at this talk she gave in 1936, we might have a better idea.

Clipping from The San Francisco Examiner, Feb 9, 1936

(Throughout the spring and summer, I’ll be posting about lost ladies of garden writing every two weeks instead of weekly. If you know of a lost lady of garden writing I should check out, let me know in a comment!)