Asa Bacon, Jr.

Male

February 8, 1771

February 5, 1857

Canterbury, CT

Leesburg, VA
Canterbury, CT

Lucretia Champion Bacon (March 16, 1807)

Asa Bacon was the son of Asa Bacon, a captain in the Revolutionary War and a respected farmer in the state of Connecticut. His mother, Abigial Whitney Bacon of Plainfield, Vermont, was his father's second wife.

Bacon attended several schools and academies in Canterbury and Windham before entering Yale College in 1789. Bacon graduated from Yale with a distinguished record in 1793 and immediately afterward worked in the law office of General Cleveland in his native town of Canterbury. After spending six months there, he entered the Litchfield Law School and prepared to enter the practice of law. He was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1795.

Bacon then went to Virginia and was admitted to the bar after great difficulty and expense, settling for three years in Leesburg, ...Virginia. In 1798, Bacon returned to Canterbury and opened a law office. Bacon took on four students, three of whom were from Massachusetts, and all of whom went on to great distinction. One became governor of that state, another was a judge on the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and another became a Congressman from New York State. After practicing law for seven years in Canterbury, Bacon was elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1800.

In 1803 he relocated to Litchfield, Connecticut at the invitation of the former congressman John Allen to become his partner. Due to his failing health, however, Allen retired in 1812.

In 1807, Bacon married Lucretia Champion of East Haddam, Connecticut. She was the only daughter of Epaphroditus Champion, and her brother had attended the Law School in Litchfield in 1805. Asa and Lucretia had three children.

Bacon attempted to continue his political career after his marriage without great success. He ran for the United States Congress and lost for ten consecutive years between 1806 and and 1816. While Bacon did not succeed in establishing a successful political career, he maintained a full legal practice until he was sixty years old.

In 1832, "pneumoniac attacks" forced him to retire from the bar as he was unable to continue public speaking. Despite this challenge, Bacon pursued a new career as the president of the Phoenix Branch Bank of Litchfield from 1833 to 1846. When his policies proved to be too cautious for many shareholders he resigned from the position, sold his Litchfield property and moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1851 where he lived until his death.
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In 1808, 1810, and 1811 Asa Bacon, Jr. served on the Committee of Examination for the Litchfield County Court admission to the bar.

1794

Attended several schools and academies in Canterbury, CT and Windham, CT before entering Yale College in 1789. He graduated from Yale in 1793.

Lawyer; Political Office; Business

Connecticut in 1795, and Virginia in 1796

State Representative (CT) 1800

Handwritten list of names on loose papers titled "prior to 1798," inside Catalogue of Litchfield Law School (Hartford, CT: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, 1849).

Baldwin, Thomas W. Bacon Genealogy. Michael Bacon of Dedham, 1640 and his Descendants. Cambridge, MA: Press of Murray and Emery Company, 1915.

Boardman, David Sherman. Sketches of the Early Lights of Litchfield Bar. J. Humphrey, Jr., 1860.

Trowbridge, Francis Bacon. The Champion Genealogy. A History of the Descendants of Henry Champion of Saybrook and Lyme, Connecticut. New Haven, CT: Printed for the Author, 1891.