Anna Green Winslow had doubtless heard much talk about this Rev.
John Bacon, the new minister at the Old South Church, for much had
been said about him in the weekly press: whether he should have an
ordination dinner or not, and he did not; accounts of his
ordination; and then notice of the sale of his sermons in the
_Boston Gazette_.
All Mr. Bacon's parishioners did not share Anna's liking for him; he
found himself at the Old South in sorely troubled waters. He made a
most unpropitious and trying entrance at best, through succeeding
the beloved Joseph Sewall, who had preached to Old South listeners
for fifty-six years. He came to town a stranger. When, a month
later, Governor Hutchinson issued his annual Thanksgiving
Proclamation, there was placed therein an "exceptionable clause"
that was very offensive to Boston patriots, relating to the
continuance of civil and religious liberties. It had always been the
custom to have the Proclamation read by the ministers in the Boston
churches for the two Sundays previous to Thanksgiving Day, but the
ruling governor very cannily managed to get two Boston clergymen to
read his proclamation the third Sunday before the appointed day,
when all the church members, being unsuspectingly present, had to
listen to the unwelcome words. One of these clerical instruments of
gubernatorial diplomacy and craft was John Bacon. Samuel Adams wrote
bitterly of him, saying, "He performed this servile task a week
before the time, when the people were not aware of it." The _Boston
Gazette_ of November 11 commented severely on Mr. Bacon's action,
and many of his congregation were disgusted with him, and remained
after the service to talk the Proclamation and their unfortunate new
minister over.
It might have been offered, one might think, as some excuse, that he
had so recently come from Maryland, and was probably unacquainted
with the intenseness of Massachusetts politics; and that he had also
been a somewhat busy and preoccupied man during his six weeks'
presence in Boston, for he had been marrying a wife,--or rather a
widow. In the _Boston Evening Post_ of November 11, 1771, I read
this notice: "Married, the Rev'd John Bacon to Mrs. Elizabeth
Cummings, daughter of Ezekiel Goldthwait, Esq."
He retained his pastorate, however, in spite of his early mistake,
through anxious tea-party excitement and forlorn war-threatened
days, till 1775, with but scant popularity and slight happiness,
with bitter differences of opinion with his people over atonement
and imputation, and that ever-present stumbling-block to New England
divines,--baptism under the Half Covenant,--till he was asked to
resign.
Nor did he get on over smoothly with his fellow minister, John Hunt.
In a curious poem of the day, called "Boston Ministers" (which is
reprinted in the _New England Historical and Genealogical Register_
of April, 1859), these verses appear:--
At Old South there's a jarring pair,
If I am not mistaken,
One may descry with half an eye
That Hunt is far from Bacon.
Wise Hunt can trace out means of grace
As leading to conversion,
But Hopkins scheme is Bacons theme,
And strange is his assertion.
It mattered little, however, that Parson Bacon had to leave the Old
South, for that was soon no longer a church, but a riding school for
the British troops.
Mr. Bacon retired, after his dismissal, to Canterbury, Conn., his
birthplace. His friendly intimacy with Mrs. Deming proved of value
to her, for when she left Boston, in April, 1775, at the time of the
closing of the city gates, she met Mr. Bacon in Providence. She says
in her journal:--
"Towards evening Mr & M^rs Bacon, with their daughter, came into
town. M^r Bacon came to see me. Enquir'd into my designs, &c. I told
him truely I did not know what to do. That I had thot of giting
farther into the country. Of trying to place Sally in some family
where she might earn her board, & to do something like it for
Lucinda, or put her out upon wages. That when I left the plain I had
some faint hope I might hear from Mr Deming while I continued at
Providence, but that I had little of that hope remaining. M^r Bacon
advised me to go into Connecticutt, the very thing I was desirous
of. Mr Bacon sd that he would advise me for the present to go to
Canterbury, his native place. That he would give me a Letter to his
Sister, who would receive me kindly & treat me tenderly, & that he
would follow me there in a few days."
This advice Mrs. Deming took, and made Canterbury her temporary
home.
Mr. Bacon did not again take charge of a parish. After the
Revolution he became a magistrate, went to the legislature, became
judge of the court of common pleas, and a member of congress. He did
not wholly give up his disputatious ways, if we can judge from the
books written by and to him, one of the latter being, "A Droll,
a Deist, and a John Bacon, Master of Arts, Gently Reprimanded."
His wife, who was born in 1733, and died in Stockbridge in 1821, was
the daughter of Ezekiel Goldthwait, a Tory citizen of Boston,
a register of deeds, and a wealthy merchant. A portrait of Mrs.
Bacon, painted by Copley, is remarkable for its brilliant eyes and
beautiful hands and arms.