Bacon, William Thompson

Bacon, William Thompson a Congregational minister, was born in Woodbury, Conn., Aug. 24, 1812. He entered college at the age of twenty-one, after several years of mercantile life. He graduated at Yale College in 1837. After graduation he studied theology in the Yale Divinity School for three years, and was ordained Dec. 28, 1842, pastor of the Congregational Church in Trumbull, Conn., but resigned on account of ill-health, May 28, 1844. In 1845 and 1846 he edited the New-Englander, a quarterly magazine. published in New Haven, and in the latter year joined in establishing the New Haven Morning Journal and Courier, which he edited until 1849. For the next year or two he supplied the pulpit of the Congregational Church in South Britain, a parish in Southbury, Conn. and in 1853-54 he supplied the old Church in Trumbull. He also conducted a boarding and day school in Woodbury for some years. In 1866 he went to Derby, Conn., and became editor of the Derby Transcript, which he conducted with vigor. He died at Derby, May 18, 1881. His literary tastes were already marked while in college. He was one of the first board of editors of the Yale Literary Magazine. He published three volumes of poems, the last in 1880. See Obituary Record of Yale College, 1881.