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181 EPILOGUE EDWARD W. BACON RESIGNED FROM THE ARMY ON NOVEMBER 20, 1865, and was honorably discharged by the Military Division of the Gulf on January 8, 1866.1 Footloose and uncertain for a while, he soon ventured upon a new career. Almost certainly his father influenced the choice and also helped him to overcome his concerns that he was too old to return to university classrooms. Probably few were surprised when Bacon entered Yale Divinity School. Two older brothers, Leonard and George, had entered the ministry and, of course, father Leonard Bacon enjoyed high standing as a Congregational clergyman.2 In 1868 Edward Bacon earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree at Yale, and then married Mary E. Staples, granddaughter of Jonathan Knight, former head of the Yale Medical School. Soon they had their first child, George W., born in 1869. Also in 1869 he became the minister of a church in Wolcottville, now part of Torrington, Conn. But soon Bacon moved his wife and son to Flint, Michigan, as pastor of another Congregational church and there a second son was born in March 1873, followed by a daughter in December 1874. A Flint history’s church section reported that he belonged to the “celebrated Bacon family of Connecticut” and that the new minister was “conspicuous for his rare gift of preaching.”3 Next Bacon shifted to a church in Springfield, Ohio. After a short time with that gathering, he learned of a vacancy closer to his roots and family. The First Congregational Church of New London, Conn., needed a minister and he took that post in 1877. Church members described him as a “scholarly preacher and able pastor.”4 Seemingly, all was well. Bacon had adjusted to civilian life. He took time off in 1876 to accompany his father and several brothers on a sentimental journey to the senior Bacon’s beginnings in Ohio. However, that year was shadowed by the death of sister Rebecca, the family stalwart. Apparently he spent little time looking back on his war service, though he retained some interest in military matters. He belonged to the Army and Navy Club and for a time served as a chaplain for the 3rd Connecticut National Guard regiment. One source declared that he “was a great favorite with the members of the command.” Then in 1879 182 Epilogue he addressed the New London Historical Society with a paper entitled “New London and the War of 1812.”5 Yet all was not well. As a lad and as a youthful sailor and soldier, Bacon’s family had always worried about his health and believed that he had a frail constitution. Bacon himself spoke of afflictions during his service and likely the years in the armed forces had hastened the advance of his illness.6 At any rate, “consumptive tendencies” appeared in the early 1880s. In modern terminology, that meant he showed symptoms of active tuberculosis. His mother had died of the disease in 1844, just a year after his birth, and an older brother, Benjamin, had succumbed to it in 1848. At the time, no antibiotics existed to kill or suppress the responsible bacteria. Then the only treatment for the contagious disease—and that only newly recognized—was for the patient to seek a cure in a better climate or in a sanatorium.7 Sorrow joined worry when Bacon and his wife lost their oldest son, George. Described as a “bright boy,” the thirteen- or fourteen-year-old died in New London in 1883. Though the New London church listed Bacon as serving there until 1886, he took his family West sometime in 1884 in an effort to restore his health. He served briefly in 1884–85 at the First Congregational Church of Santa Barbara, California, but “unwisely” returned to New London when he felt better. But consumption also returned with a vengeance and Bacon then went back to California. There he was a minister at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. It was in San Francisco, across the bay, that his wife gave birth to their last child, Rebecca, born in 1886.8 In a last desperate effort to reverse the course of his illness, Bacon entered a sanatorium in Santa Clara County, just south of San Francisco. It was too late. He died in June 1887 at the age of forty-four.9 Mary Staples Bacon, his widow, was left with three children, but then death struck again. Rebecca, their last born, died in 1889 when...

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