Bacon
Author: Nev. Ramsden
Thomas BACON (c. 1665-1718) – Patriarch of the Whitehaven Bacons
Thomas BACON was born circa 1665 in Cumberland. He was a Mariner at Whitehaven. He married Isabell UNKNOWN circa 1690 in Cumberland. He died in 1718 in Whitehaven. He was buried on 7 April 1718 in St.Nicholas church, Whitehaven.
In his Will Thomas mentions his wife Isabell; his son & heir William; his son Williams two sons Thomas & Anthony; his son Thomas; his son Robert & his daughter Mary Bacon. He had shares in ships:- the Ann & Elizabeth £80; the Lamb at £40; the True love at £15; the Brotherhood at £10; he also owned a fishing boat valued at £10. His Inventory was valued at £419-5-0.
Their children:-
Isabell UNKNOWN died in 1740 in Whitehaven. She was buried on 19 June 1740 in St.Nicholas’s church. She and Thomas BACON had the following children:
John BACON (c. 1690 - 1694). John was born circa 1690 in Whitehaven. He died in 1694 in Whitehaven. He was buried on 8 February 1694 in St.Nicholas’s church.
William BACON (c. 1693 - ). William was born circa 1693 in Whitehaven. He was a Mariner. He married Elizabeth RICHARDSON on 27 August 1710 in St.Bees church and had children.
Ellinor BACON (1695 - 1696). Ellinor was born in 1695 in Whitehaven. She was baptised on 10 October 1695 in St.Bees. She died in 1696 in Whitehaven. She was buried on 13 August 1696 in St.Nicholas’s church.
Thomas BACON ( c.1695 - ) Taken from his fathers Will. He married Rachel Atkinson on 14 February 1718 in St.Nicholas’s church.
Mary BACON (1697 - ). Mary was born in 1697 in Whitehaven. She was baptised on 21 April 1697
in St.Bees church. By 1737 she was married with the family name of Brisco and was granted the administration of her mothers Will.
Robert BACON (1699 - ). Robert was born in 1699 in Whitehaven. He was baptised on 22 September 1699 in St.Bees church. He was buried on 24 June 1732 at St.Nicholas’s church.
Prudence BACON ( c.1700 - ). Taken from her mothers Will
Anthony Bacon 1717-1786 Master Mariner, Tobacco Merchant, Slave Trader and Iron King
Anthony Bacon was one of the greatest merchants and industrialists of the 18th century who rose from ordinary beginnings in Whitehaven to become a Member of Parliament and one of the richest commoners in England; of Woodford, Essex, and Copthall Court, Throgmorton St., London.
Sources
Price, Jacob M. "Bacon, Anthony, merchant and ironmaster." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
3 Apr. 2018. Published online: 23 September 2004, This version: 24 May 2008
http://www.whitehavenandwesternlakeland.co.uk/people/default.htm
Bacon, Anthony (bap. 1717, d. 1786), merchant and ironmaster, the son of William Bacon and his wife, Elizabeth Richardson, was baptized at St Bees, Cumberland, on 24 January 1717. His father and grandfather Thomas were ships' captains in the coal trade between Whitehaven and Ireland, though his father also made several trading voyages to the Chesapeake. His mother died in 1725, when he was eight, and his father a few years later, and the boy was taken to Talbot county on the eastern shore of Maryland, where he was raised by his maternal uncles, Thomas (d. 1734) and Anthony (d. 1741) Richardson, who were merchants there. Young Anthony was trained by them as a merchant and as a mariner. He apparently made a good impression for, on coming of age, he was in 1738 made master of the York, a vessel in the Maryland tobacco trade owned by John Hanbury, the leading London tobacco importer.
After the death of his two uncles, Bacon found himself the guardian of his uncle Anthony's two young sons, Anthony and Thomas Richardson. He then moved to London, from where he operated as an itinerant merchant mariner during the period c.1742–1747 and as a resident merchant thereafter. In the 1740s he traded primarily with Maryland, but in the 1750s added Virginia and the Spanish wine trade. During the Seven Years' War he entered government contracting in collaboration with John Biggin, a native of Whitehaven and a large London coal merchant (who had been a major navy victualling contractor in the 1740s). Bacon was recognized as a specialist in shipping, and he provided vessels and carrying services to the Royal Navy. He was a major transporter of victuals in the Quebec campaign of 1759. In the later stages of the war he also branched out into army contracts, undertaking to victual and pay the troops stationed on the African coast at Fort Louis, Senegal, and at Goree. This transaction was in part an extension of his trade with the Canaries, source of both wine and coin for his African contracts.
Neither the date of marriage nor the precise identity of Bacon's wife, Elizabeth (d. 1799), is known. Their only child, Anthony Richardson Bacon, was born in 1757 but died in 1770. While his wife remained at the Cyfarthfa residence, Bacon, as a member of parliament, spent much time in the capital, where he kept a mistress, Mary Bushby, during the years c.1770 to 1786. At his death, in Cyfarthfa on 21 January 1786, Mary was left with their daughter, Elizabeth, and four sons, Anthony, Thomas, Robert, and William, of whom only the first two reached adulthood. Bacon was buried in London, at St Bartholomew by the Exchange. He made generous provision in his will for Mary Bushby and for the education of her children. He left his ironworks to his sons, but the two survivors, Anthony and Thomas, when they came of age, first leased and then sold their inherited undertakings and lived as rentiers. The Cyfarthfa works, which about 1807 were the largest ironworks in the world, were operated for over a century by the Crawshay family until absorbed into Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds in 1902. The Plymouth works were acquired by Richard Hill, an employee of Bacon who had married Mary Bushby's sister. His family controlled and managed the Plymouth Iron Company until the original works were closed about 1860.
Anthony Bacon 1717-1786 - Family History
Anthony Bacon was born in Whitehaven in 1717 son of William Bacon of Byersteads, between Sandwith and St. Bees, and baptised on 24th January. William had married Elizabeth Richardson in 1710 but she died when Anthony was only 8 years old. He also had a brother Thomas Bacon who also became successful in America having taken a very different career path.
The Tobacco Trade
Nothing is known of Anthony’s childhood and much of his life is sketchy but it appears that he travelled to the American colonies as a young man were he had a store in the Chesapeake area of Maryland. He was possibly only 15 years old and working for his uncle, Anthony Richardson. The store was at Dover on the Choptank river and acted as agent for the sale of tobacco which was the main trade between Maryland and Whitehaven. His ships moored in fresh water to kill the barnacles and Teredo worms and traded provisions and household goods with tobacco for the outgoing journey. It was quite lucrative and it is amazing that Bacon had become so established at such a young age, as he says that he left the colonies when he was 22 years old.
The Iron Trade
Bacon claimed that he faced ruin many times but by 1764 his finances seemed on a permanent up and he became the Member of Parliament for Aylesbury which he retained until his retirement. This didn’t stop his thirst for new ventures and when his wife’s cousin, the eminent scientist Dr. William Brownrigg [also of Whitehaven] approached him with a mining scheme in Wales he must have known he was on to a winner. Brownrigg was an expert on Coal and Iron mining, which he had made a study of in Whitehaven. Wales not only had iron, coal and limestone but also water which at the time was still the main source of power. Just as Whitehaven had been 100 years earlier, Merthyr Tydfil was just an insignificant village – Bacon and Brownrigg must have seen the possibility of emulating the Lowthers and turning it, like Whitehaven, into an industrial centre for trade.
Merthyr Tydfil
They formed a partnership in 1765 and leased the mineral rights to land 8 miles long by 4 miles wide, some 4000 acres, for £100 per year for the next 99 years. This came from Earl Talbot and Mr. Richards of Cardiff and also the Plymouth district from Lord Plymouth. However, he also needed a small amount of surface land for the ironworks etc. and this cost a further £150 per year from local farmers. They then brought in blast furnace expert Charles Wood who happened to be married Brownrigg’s sister, Jemima. He constructed the blast furnace in 1767 and also built a weir on the Taff and a leat for a water wheel to power the bellows for the furnace. They also organised the building of a turnpike road 26 miles long to take the produce to Cardiff.
Anthony Bacon died in 1786 on 21st January as one of the richest men in the country having three iron works in Wales, coal mines on the Banklands estate at Workington and the land in Virginia. Unfortunately, his only son to his wife Elizabeth had died at the age of 12 in 1770. However, to Mary Bushby of Gloucestershire, who was his mistress in London since 1770, he had five other children, though none had reached majority by his death. Mary received £1000 plus £50 per child to bring them up until they went into education.
Anthony Bacon the second - received the Cyfarthfa estate, Thomas Received the Plymouth furnace and they shared the Hirwan furnace, whilst Robert got the Workington mines. Elizabeth was to get an annuity of £300 when she reached 21 and the baby William got the remainder up to the value of £10,000 upon adulthood.
Long after his death Bacon’s accounts in America were still being argued over by his executors as debts accrued before the war were still liable after independence.
The executors leased the Cyfarthfa works to Crawshay, the Hirwaun works to Mr. Glover and the Plymouth works to Mr. Hill. The Bacon boys weren’t interested in the iron foundries and sold them to retire to country retreats and a life of luxury. Crawshay bought the Cyfarthfa works in 1794 and by 1803 it was the biggest in the world, employing 1500 people.
Also:-
the following is taken from - Legacies of British Slave-ownership database, UCL
Anthony Bacon - Biography
Government contractor, slave-trader and merchant, partner with Anthony Richardson and Gilbert Francklyn (each of whom q.v.), who later moved (without his partners) into iron-making at Cyfarthfa in South Wales in the 1770s. Although both Richardson and Franckyln appear among early purchasers of land [and enslaved people] in the Ceded and Neutral Islands after 1763, to date no slave-holding in the Caribbean by Bacon himself has been identified in these records. It appears from his will, however, in which he left to Anthony Richardson all the debt owed to him [Antony Bacon] by Gilbert Franckyn of Tobago (other than £1200 which either Richardson himself or Francklyn - the will is ambiguous - owed to Bacon on a bond and paid to 'Mr Appleton'), that Bacon had funded Francklyn, at least in part. In addition, he left in his will his share of 30,000 acres and the enslaved people on it in Virginia that he owned with 'sundry gentlemen.' Jacob Price said of him: 'The shifting of his interests from African and West Indian commerce to south Wales iron making is an extremely clear (if not necessarily common) example of the migration of capital from slave-based commerce to domestic industry.'
Anthony Bushby Bacon, son of Anthony Bacon and Mary Bushby, died 1827. In his will he named the surviving children: Elizabeth, who married Thomas Thornhill, Anthony, who married Charlotte Harley, Charles, George William, Richard Thomas, Phillip, Mary, Fanny, Emily, and Henry. He said he wished to be buried next to his dear departed wife in Shaw Churchyard near Newbury, Berkshire, England.
Looking for descendants of these children - Jim Newman
Anthony Bacon’s grandson Anthony Bacon III (1796-1864)
He became a Cavalry General of some note but was dogged by financial difficulties all his life due to the excessive lifestyle to which he had become accustomed.
Anthony Bacon (British Army officer) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name Anthony Bacon
Born: 1796 Died: 1864
Service/branch British Army in the Napoleonic wars
Awards Waterloo Medal
Children 3
Family background
Bacon was born at Llandaff in Glamorgan, the son of Anthony Bushby Bacon (1772–1827) of Elcot Park at Kintbury and Benham Park at Marsh Benham in Speen near Newbury in Berkshire, one of the richest commoners in England. The younger Bacon was educated at Eton College
Bacon's grandparents were Anthony Bacon (1718–1786), the industrialist, and his mistress Mary Bushby, of Gloucestershire.[1] This Bacon was a notable ironmaster and colliery owner in Wales who made Merthyr Tydfil the iron-smelting centre of Great Britain, was one of the richest men of his time. However, the sons showed little or no interest in their father's businesses and rapidly sold or leased them to men such as Richard Crawshay, who was one of the witnesses to the father's will. This included the mineral rights at Cyfarthfa.
General Bacon's sister Emily married 1835 a wealthy landowner Lt. Col. Thomas Peers Williams (1795–1875), MP for Great Marlow 1820–1868 and Father of the House of Commons December 1867 – 1868; several of their daughters, and therefore Bacon's nieces, married into the Peerage.
Family
General Bacon died at his home in Crondall in Hampshire in 1864, and his three surviving children settled in Australia, where they were soon joined by widow, Lady Charlotte Harley.
Bacon had married Lady Charlotte in 1823. She was legally the second or third daughter of Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, by his wife, Jane Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. James Scott, M.A., Vicar of Itchen Stoke in Hampshire. However, Jane was a notable mistress of Lord Byron, and Charlotte was almost certainly fathered by one of her mother's many lovers. Lord Byron dedicated Childe Harold's Pilgrimage to her under the name Ianthe. Her brother Alfred Harley, 6th Earl of Oxford and Mortimer died 19 January 1853 without issue, but with four sisters as co-heiresses, including Lady Jane Harley, wife of Henry Bickersteth, Lord Langdale. By 1877, after long litigation over her brother's estate, Lady Charlotte returned to England as his heiress and died in 1880.
The couple's children included the early Australian settlers, Harley Ereville Bacon and Nora Creina, the wife of Charles Burney Young and mother of the Australian MP, Harry Dove Young of Kanmantoo. Their youngest son, Anthony Harley Bacon, was the father of Gladys Luz Bacon (died 28 January 1932), whose own son became the 14th Earl of Kinnoul, and Harley Bacon, who, in 1900, became engaged to Countess Melanie von Seckendorff, one of Germany's richest heiresses.
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Rev.Thomas Bacon - circa.1711 – 1768
Rev. Thomas Bacon, Rector at All Saints Church, Frederick, Maryland
Born 1711 Isle of Man
Died May 24, 1768 (aged 57) Frederick, Maryland
Occupation Educator, priest
Spouse(s) ?????? a widow (died 1750)
Elizabeth Bozman Belchier (surviving)
Children John, Rachel, Elizabeth, Mary - taken from his Wikipedia,
Thomas Bacon (1711 – 1768), was the eldest son of William Bacon of Whitehaven, he was an Episcopal clergyman, musician, poet, publisher and author, and considered the most learned man in Maryland of his day. Bacon is still known as the first compiler of the Maryland statutes.
Early years
He was the eldest child of mariner William Bacon and his second wife, Elizabeth Richardson; and Thomas was probably born a year or so after their 1710 marriage. He had an elder half-brother William and a younger brother Anthony (baptised in 1716). Thomas Bacon was either born on the Isle of Man, or at his parents' earlier home in Whitehaven, a port town in Cumberland, after which they moved to the island.
He probably received a very good education for his time, because by the mid-1730s, Bacon lived in Dublin and worked in the royal customs service. He had previously managed vessels in the coal trade between Whitehaven and Dublin. In 1737, Bacon published his first book, A Compleat System of the Revenue of Ireland, in its Branches of Import, Export, and Inland Duties, Containing:-
I. An Abridgement of English and Irish Statutes Relating to the Revenue of Ireland
II. The Former and Additional Book of Rates Inwards and Outwards, etc.
III. A View of the Duties which Compose the Revenue of Ireland, etc.
IV. The Method of Making Entries, etc.
This earned an invitation for him to become a free citizen of Dublin, with associated privileges.
By 1741, Bacon had married and was publishing the bi-weekly Dublin Mercury, possibly with the help of his wife or his elder half-brother William **, as well as auctioning goods and operating a coffeehouse. In addition to private pamphlets and handbills, Bacon also published the official Irish newspaper, the Dublin Gazette in 1642 and 1643, but abruptly ceased publication in July, after which Augustus Long resumed publication on August 23, 1743.[3] In the interim, a copyright dispute between author Samuel Richardson and other Irish publishers of his controversial novel Pamela, may have caused problems for Bacon, as some characterized him as an agent for the English publisher for selling imported copies after an Irish publisher had printed the first page required under Irish copyright law at the time (which changed as a result of the dispute).
taken from - Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550 – 1800, by Mary Pollard, 2000
** - This authority claims that William was in fact his son and was apprenticed 19 June 1742
Thomas Bacon Auctioneer, bookseller, printer & press corrector of Bacons Coffee House, Essex St., Dublin
14 Feb.1744 Thomas Bacons business had failed and that year Thomas started his studies for the ministry on the Isle of Man and was ordained in March 1745. He then went to America as a missionary where he had a prosperous career in Maryland.
------ see ‘Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland’ (Knoxville, 1972), 313 to 387.
Personal life
Bacon was married twice. He sailed from England with his first wife and son John, probably born in the early 1730s. After her death, in the mid-1750s, the widower clergyman was involved in a scandal, with a spinster mulatto woman named Beck, who accused him of being the father of her child. That was not proven, and he filed a lawsuit for defamation, which plodded through the courts. In 1756, Bacon remarried, to Elizabeth Bozman, daughter of Col. Thomas Bozman, a prominent Talbot County resident. However, that too caused scandal, for Rev. Bacon had earlier married her to Rev. John Belchier, and after the couple moved to Philadelphia, Elizabeth learned that her husband was an adventurer and bigamist (having left a wife in England) so she returned home and married the widower Bacon. Bacon was fined for not properly reading the marriage bans beforehand, but could not pay, so that legal action dogged him for years.
Death and legacy
Bacon died in Frederick on 24 May 1768, leaving his widow Elizabeth and three daughters (Rachel, Elizabeth, and Mary). His three slaves (a boy, woman and child), were together valued by the probate court at £100. His daughter Elizabeth moved to England to become a servant to his brother Anthony's wife, and both Rachel and Mary ultimately married and remained in the colony.
also see - Genealogy.com -- Bio for Thomas Bacon, brother of Anthony Bacon, Esq Merchant of London By Dana Majernik May 29, 2012 at 10:44:27
19 November 1740 - The Will of ANTHONY RICHARDSON, gent, Talbot County, Maryland????
To nephew Anthony Bacon, Executor, land in “Out Range” in Dorchester Co. purchased of Burtonwood Alcock.
[which is West of "Hereford" ?and near Fowling Creek.?]
Witn: Terrence Connolly, Henry Price, Thomas Turner, William Goldsborough
29 May 1741 ?– Probate: sworn by three subscribers Terrence Connolly, Henry Price, and William Goldsborough
MSA S538-33: Prerogative Court (Wills) DD 1, Vol. 22, 1738-1742, pp. 361, 362
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10 December 1741 – An Inventory of all the Goods & Chattles of Mr. ANTHONY RICHARDSON late of Talbot County dec’d.
Kindred: Elizabeth Richardson, Anthony Bacon
Creditors: Wm. Goldsborough, Terrence Connolly
Appraisers: Geo. Robin, J. Goldsborough
MSA SM11-26: Prerogative Court (Inventories), Vol. 26, 1741-1742, pp. 447-458
The Richardson Monument was erected May ye 12, 1742, By Their Most Affectionate but Afflicted Kinsman, ANTHONY BACON.
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taken from: Archives of Maryland Online; Volume 75, Bacon’s Laws of Maryland http://aomol.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000075/html/am75np--1.html
Editor’s Preface and Introduction
THOMAS BACON’S LIFE (Selected Excerpts)
Birth and Family
Thomas Bacon was the son of William Bacon and his wife, Elizabeth Richardson, the daughter of Anthony and Lydia Richardson. The couple were married in St. Bees, Cumberland, on 27 August 1710. Thomas was probably their eldest child, born c. 1711 or 1712, followed by a younger brother Anthony, who was baptized on 24 January 1716.
His arrival in Maryland
Bacon’s link to Talbot County, where he first settled, probably came through his younger brother Anthony, who was in the colony as early as 1733, when he lived in Bullenbrook Hundred in the household of his uncle, merchant Anthony Richardson. As Anthony Bacon was only about seventeen at the time, he was undoubtedly learning the mercantile trade from his uncle, with whom he was associated in business until the latter’s death in 1741.
The Bacon Family in Maryland
All three of William Bacon’s children lived in Maryland for part of their lives although only Thomas died in the colony. Anthony Bacon, as Henry Callister noted, arrived in Maryland by 1733 and remained in the colony through the 1740s. By July 1751, he had returned to London where he continued his mercantile business. At some point prior to 1785 he moved to the barony of Cyfarthsa in the county of Glamorgan, selling his Worcestershire County land to his brother William at that time. When Anthony Bacon wrote his will in June 1785 (proved in London in February 1786), his survivors included his wife Elizabeth, the three daughters of his brother Thomas, and his brother William, to whom Anthony left responsibility for settlement of his estate in Virginia. That Anthony, then 67 years old, assigned this task to William is perhaps the strongest argument for William being the youngest, rather than oldest, of William Senior’s three children.
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History of Talbot County Maryland 1661-1861 By Oswald Tilghman 1915
Worthies of Talbot - Revd Thomas Bacon 1700? - 1768