Bacon was born on June 27, 1835, in Dorchester, Massachusetts.[1] He was the eldest child of Lory Baldwin Bacon (1806–1877) and Sarah Ann (née Hammond) Bacon (1810–1886).[2] Among his siblings were Sarah Walton Bacon and Louisa Fisher Bacon.
After graduating from Boston High School, he moved to New York City to "engage in the dry goods business."[3] In 1860, he became a partner in the form of Hurlbert, Von Volkenburgh & Co., and a year later organized the firm of Francis M. Bacon & Co.[4][5] The following year, because of ill health, he went to California. In 1873, he founded Haines, Bacon & Col, woolen commission merchants. In 1877, the firm became Bacon, Baldwin & Col, which continued after Baldwin's death in 1892 when it was renamed to Bacon & Co, and located at 92 Franklin Street in New York.[3]
On November 24, 1862, Bacon was married to Margaret Rogers Gray (1839–1876), a daughter of Elizabeth Phillips (née Chapman) Gray and the Rev. Frederick Turell Gray of King's Chapel, Boston.[6] Before her death in 1876, they were the parents of five children:[2]
Francis McNiel Bacon Jr. (b. 1864), who married Pauline Post.[7][8]
Margaret Gray Bacon (1866–1933),[9] who Clinton Gilbert in 1899.[10][11] They divorced in 1921.[12][13]
James Frederick Bacon (1867–1929),[6] a Columbia graduate who married Alice (née Lee) Miller,[14] a daughter of John Bowers Lee and former wife of Ralph G. Miller, in July 1912.[15]
Elizabeth Chapman Bacon (1870–1873), who died young.[6]
Rogers Hammond Bacon (1874–1962),[16] an 1899 graduate of Harvard Law;[17] he married Mabel (née Dean) Kalbfleisch, daughter of James Edward Dean and widow of Edward Kalbfleisch, in June 1912.[18][19]
After her death, he married Katherine Paris Storrow (1842–1917) in October 1879. She was a daughter of Thomas Wentworth Storrow and Sarah Sanders (née Paris) Storrow and a grandniece of author Washington Irving. Her sister, Julie Grinnell Storrow, was the wife of Stephen Van Rensselaer Cruger.[20] Together, they were the parents of one child:[6]
Through his eldest son Francis, he was a grandfather of Francis McNeil Bacon III (who married photographer Antoinette Wood Frissell, sister of explorer Varick Frissell, in 1932),[28][29] and Pauline Bacon (who married attorney Harold Edward Herrick in 1918).[30][31]
^ abSociety, Sons of the American Revolution New York State (1894). Yearbook. Sons of the American Revolution New York State Society. pp. 58–59. Retrieved 25 July 2022.