St. John's Cemetery Individual Record

Henry Gerhardt S. BaarsHenry Gerhardt S. Baars

Henry Gerhardt S. Baars
(February 29, 1844 -- July 2, 1909)

Section: 15
Space: 1
Lot: 23
Spouse: Mary Ellison Dunwody
Place of Birth: Oldenburg Providence, Ger
Owner: Henry Baars
Area: 0

Highly successful International Lumber Exporter, Businessman and Land Developer

The story of the Baars family and four generations of active real estate development is one of the fascinating sagas of Pensacola. Henry's son, Theo and subsequently Theo, Jr.; then Theo, III and his brother, Bryan, have continued the family real estate promotion tradition.

Submitted by John Appleyard

The life of Henry Baars began in Oldenburg Province in Northwestern Germany in 1844. His father, a prosperous lumberman and farmer, had prepared his son to become a proper heir to a landed fortune. But then came the new order of Kaiser William and his chancellor. Otto von Bismarck. Their efforts to unify and erect the many provinces which then made up Germany involved creation of a large conscript army. To avoid having his son become a soldier the elder Baars purchased a military substitute for the boy, and also arranged a small partnership for him in a British timber trading company. That firm, operated by Carl Epping & Sons of London, had a Savannah office, and it was there that Henry Baars went in 1860.

The youth had barely arrived and begun his business career when the War Between The States erupted. Henry Baars enlisted in the Southern army, and four years later was discharged, older, wounded, penniless. Within months he had reopened the Epping office and had wooed a beautiful if impoverished Southern belle named Mary Ellison Dunwody. The couple were married shortly thereafter, and in 1870 Baars elected to move to Pensacola, where prospects for lumbering and the timber trade seemed far better.

After a brief time he left the Epping company and opened his own firm.

From 1871 forward fortune smiled upon the Baars. They had eight children (four survived infancy), and their business enterprise soared. Soon Baars was acting as agent for up to seventy-five mills cutting and sizing timber regionally. These materials were being shipped to four continents and nearby islands. Baars was joined in the enterprise by his brother-in-law, Brian Dunwody, and as they grew older, by his sons Theo and John Ernest. A second firm, Baars, Dunwody & Company, was formed to facilitate lumber exports. Then the group founded a company to operate tug boats related to local shipping. This was called the Dunwody-Aiken Towing Company (Aiken was a Baars family in-law). Decade after decade, these enterprises were profitable.

Throughout their married life Henry and Mary Ellison Baars enjoyed a unique "game". On gift giving occasions he would ask "...and what would you like this time...?", ...and she would respond: "Just buy me a piece of land." Time after time Baars did. By 1890 there was much cutover property near the city's boundaries, and Baars would acquire a modest package for each occasion. Ultimately Mary Ellison's holdings exceeded 6000 acres, all in the path of the city's growth. At one time, as they built a mansion on the city's perimeter. Henry and Mary Ellison attempted to create and market a concept which would later be known as condominiums, handsome furnished villas in a protected area near Lake Texar. However, this project, which they called Cordova Park, proved one of the family's few failures.

At the end of the War with Spain young Theo Baars took advantage of an opportunity and employed the foresight to acquire warrants issued to discharged service personnel. Those pieces of script were exchangeable for acreage on Northwest Florida's Perdido Key, a place totally unknown and thus unattractive to most discharged soldiers and sailors. From this effort the Baars clan acquired some 12,000 acres for very little; then they clung to the vacant land for almost seventy years, until the property had appeal for development.

Henry Baars continued his successful role until 1909, when he passed away. In his lifetime he was both a highly successful businessman and a patron of his adopted city. An Episcopalian, he worked with his wife and others to fund construction of the new Christ Church building erected in 1903-04. A member of the Chamber of Commerce, he strove to fund and build improvements in a downtown area which, at the turn of the century, was still considerably behind in life's niceties. He was (perhaps at his wife's prompting), a patron of the arts, and was also a backer of many of the organized outdoor sports for which the area was becoming known (sculling, horseback riding, fresh water fishing). His Palafox Pier office, for many years at the water's edge, became a Pensacola landmark, and the Baars home was the city's showplace. The family traveled extensively in later years.

Baars also was astute in recognizing that lumbering and the timber trade would end, thus he encouraged his sons and associates to begin planning other business interests. Their ventures into real estate and land development followed. The firm which Henry Baars originated in the 1870s continued to operate into the fourth generation.

Henry G. S. Baars is buried in the Baars Lot of St. John's Historic Cemetery, 2 North Section 15.

From 1900 census, he came to America in 1860, and was in the timber export business.  He married Mary E. Dunwoody.  Henry and Mary Baars were the parents of seven known children: Carl H. (1873-1874), John E. (1875), Theo (1877-1941), Annie (1879), Louis Percival (1881-1883), Marion (1885-1886), and Henry (1889-1939).  Henry G.S. Baars died July 2, 1909, buried in Baars family plot next to wife Mary E. Dunwoody Baars.  Also in family plot are sons Theo Dunwoody Baars, Henry G. Baars and his wife Marjorie T. Baars, and three children that died young, Carl Henry Baars, Louis Perival, Marion Cecil Baars, Henry Gerhardt Baars and his wife Lelia Hallmark Baars, William Firestone Baars and Frank Ellison Baars.