Margaret Nicholl Laird (31 July 1897 – June 1983) was an American missionary of the Baptist Mid-Missions who worked in the French colony of Ubangi-Shari and independent Central African Republic (CAR) from 1922 until the 1960s.
With the initial financial support of the Hoover family of her church in Englewood, Colorado, Margaret decided to join Reverend William Haas who was organizing a Baptist Mid-Missions missionary group to start work in the French colony of Ubangi-Shari.
After briefly studying French in Paris, she traveled to Ubangi-Shari and arrived in the town of Fort-Sibut in 1922,[1] where she joined Baptist Mid-Mission missionary Rosenau.
[1] In 1928, Fort-Sibut's local French administrator Félix Éboué asked the Lairds to open a mission station among the Banda people of central Ubangi-Shari at a town called Ippy in Ouaka Region.
The French wanted the Lairds to help gain the trust of the Banda in this region where diamonds and gold had been found and was beginning to be exploited.