BAEGERT, JAKOB. - Jesuit, missionary, and geographer, born at Schlettstadt (or Sélestat, Alsace) on 22 Dec. 1717, entered the novitiate at Aschaffenburg in 1736, and departed for Lower California in 1751, where he founded the mission of St Ignatius. Expelled in 1767 by order of Charles III, he returned to Germany and died at Neustadt on 29 Sept. 1772.
His major geographical work, Nachrichten von der amerikanischen Halbinsel Californien (Mannheim 1771, without the author’s name), is highly valuable for its observations on the geography and customs of the indigenous peoples; the ethnographic section was translated into English by C. Rau in Reports of the Smithsonian Institution, vols. XVII and XVIII (Washington 1863–64). A linguistic dissertation by Baegert was published in Spanish by O. Hassez: De la lengua vaciura de la Baja California, in Boletín de la Sociedad de Geografía (Mexico 1872).