Male

September 1, 1776

October 18, 1870

Boston, MA

Troy, NY

Abigail Smith Bacon (October 6, 1799)

Ezekiel Bacon was the son of John Bacon and Elizabeth Cumming Bacon. His mother's father, Ezekiel Goldwait, had been the register of Deeds of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, and the town clerk of Boston, Massachusetts. His father attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) after leaving the ministry, and had a successful career in politics, serving both in the United States Congress and as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas. Ezekial Bacon graduated from Yale College in 1794 and then attended the Litchfield Law School that same year. Bacon met Abigail Smith, his future wife, while he was a student at the law school. They had a long and difficult engagement due to political differences between Bacon and her father, Dr. Reuben Smith of Litchfield. Bacon and ...his democratic political beliefs angered Smith's father who, like most of the the other prominent citizens of Litchfield, was an adamant Federalist. He finally married Abigail in 1799; they had five children. After he was admitted to the bar in 1798, Bacon began a long and successful career both in law and politics. In addition to his political and legal accomplishments, Bacon published numerous orations and addresses during his lifetime.
[more][less]

From Obituary record of the graduates of the undergraduate schools, deceased 1860-70 (full citation below)
Ezekiel Bacon, for nearly six years the oldest surviving graduate of the college, died in Utica, N.Y., 18 Oct.,1870, aged 94. From In reply to a request made a few years since for a sketch of the events of his life, he wrote as follows : —

"Ezekiel Bacon was born in Boston, on the 1st of Sept., 1776, the only son of the Rev. John Bacon, then late pastor of the Old South Church, and of Elizabeth his wife, who was the daughter of Ezekiel Goldthwait, of Boston, and widow of the Rev. Alexander Cummings, Mr. Bacon's predecessor in office. The family settled in Stockbridge, Berkshire County, Mass., and the son was educated and graduated at Yale College of the class of ...1794 ; read law at Judge Reeve's law school in Litchfield, Ct., and practiced it in Berkshire ; was a member of the legislature of Massachusetts in 1806 and 7 ; was a member of the House of Representatives of the U. S. Congress from 1807 to 1813, serving on the committee of ways and means, and during one year its chairman. He then held
the office of Chief Justice of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas for the Western District of Massachusetts, until he received the office of Comptroller of the Treasury of the U. S.; which owing to ill health he soon after resigned, and removing into the State of N. Y., settled in Utica, where except holding the offices of member of the legislature for one year, Judge of the County Court of Common Pleas for two years, and member of the Convention of 1821 for revising the Constitution of the State, he has since resided in private life, having passed fully one-third of a long-protracted life in a condition of continued ill health and great depression of the vital and active powers of being. 'Sic itur ad astra.'"
[more][less]

1794

Graduated from Yale College in 1794.

Lawyer; Political Office

Massachusetts in 1800

Republican

U.S. Representative (MA) 1807-1812
Comptroller of the U.S. Treasury Department (1814-1815)

Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in 1811 and 1812.

State Representative (MA) 1805-1806
Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for the Western District of MA (MA) 1811-1814
State Representative (NY) 1819
Judge of Common Pleas (NY)

Member of the NY State Constitutional Convention in 1821.

Associate Judge of the County Court (Troy, NY) 1818-1820

Obituary record of the graduates of the undergraduate schools, deceased 1860-70 Volume: 1870-1880, Yale University: New Haven.

Barlow, William, and David O. Powell. “Congressman Ezekiel Bacon of Massachusetts and the Coming of the War of 1812.” Historical Journal of Western Massachusetts 6 (Spring 1978): 28-41.