User:IanManka/David Bacon

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XVII p. 279-284 David Bacon, the founder of Tallmadge, was a native of Woodstock, Massachusetts, making his natal entry into that town early in September, 1771. The English ancestry of this family came to America previous to 1640. We are indebted for our brief summary of the career of David Bacon to articles written by his distinguished son, the late Reverend Leonard Bacon, and published in the Congregational Quarterly, 1876. The family was a typical one of the New England Puritan persuasion. David was trained in the godly thought axed habits of those days. After drifting about to various locations, engaged in various avocations, he settled (1799) in Mansfield, Connecticut. His religious nature, inborn and strengthened by education, impelled him to the service of the Gospel among the most benighted of his fellowmen. He resolved to be a missionary to the Western Indians. He was not a college graduate nor an ordained minister, but self-sacrifice, unusual natural ability, and a desire to serve the Master, qualified him for the missionary field. The missionary spirit was beginning to possess the good people of New England, and in 1798 the pastors of the Connecticut churches completed an organization called "The Missionary Society of Connecticut." There still existed a partial relation, in Connecticut, of church and State, and the Governor was authorized to issue a yearly "brief" calling for a contribution from each Congregational parish in the State, for this missionary society. In the summer of 1800 David Bacon, who had read some theology with a clergyman, was examined by the committee, "as to his doctrinal and experimental acquaintance with the truth," and the examiners were "fully satisfied with his answers." Learning that he was "embarrassed in his worldly circumstances," the committee kindly undertook to mediate between Mr. Bacon and his creditors, but assumed no responsibility for his debts. Those debts could not have been very large, as it was evidently expected that he would be able to pay them out of a salary of "one hundred and ten cents a day," which was the compensation to be awarded him for his services as a missionary, with an additional allowance for an interpreter. His field was designated as the "Indians in the vicinity of Sandusky Bay or to some of the Tribes south and west of Lake Erie." His engage- ment was for a term not exceeding six months. Amid fervent prayers for his success, he bade his friends farewell and with his luggage on his back, started alone and on foot from Hartford for the then far West. Including opportunities to catch a ride now and then, he traveled about twenty-five miles a day. At Canandaigua (N. Y.) he met Captain Chapin, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and from him obtained a letter commending him to the Seneca chiefs at Buffalo Creek - now Buffalo City. At this latter point he was welcomed by Sir William Johnson, the Indian agent and interpreter, husband of the sister of Joseph Brant, chief of the Mohawks. The Indians assembled to give Mr. Bacon audience. One of the speakers was Red Jacket, the Seneca orator, who among other things said the Senecas would gladly receive a missionary if they could discover that their white neighbors were also made better by his preaching! Bacon reached Detroit thirty-four days after leaving Hartford. He visited and held council with the Indians at Mackinac, deciding that the field in that region was more promising for his work. The Indians in that locality were more numerous and more in need of the gospel. After two months sojourn in the Mackinac country, he retured to Hartford to report his plans and obtain endorsement for their execution. The Committee on Missions approved his report and his proposals for future work and the Trustees of the Missionary Society ordained him to the gospel ministry. He was married, on Christmas Eve, at Lebanon (Conn.), to Alice Parks, a most attractive and accomplished miss of eighteen, who was thenceforth to share the joys and sorrows of the young minister. In accordance with his own suggestion, the Rev. David Bacon was delegated by the Missionary Society to Arbrecroche, some forty miles from Mackinac, and a center of the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Ojibways. Thither he proceeded with his young bride in the midst of winter. But the religious zeal was irresistible and his courage dauntless. He and his wife both intended to learn the Indian languages that they might better ingratiate themselves into the confidence and friendliness of the natives. But the obstacles were greater than they had reckoned. The Catholic missionaries had been there before them; more than all else the heathen of the forest were debauched by the fur traders and made suspicious and hostile by the British and French Canadians. After months of fruitless efforts to convert the men or educate the children the outlook was "dark and gloomy and what adds to the gloom, there is little prospect that it will ever be otherwise," he wrote home. The soul of the devout but discouraged missionary was vexed with the profaneness, drunkenness, licentiousness and absolute ungodliness that surrounded him. The white man's rum and dissolute example had done its deadly work. The reverend and his intrepid wife made poor progress in acquiring the Indian dialects and interpreters for religious work were practically impossible. The situation was graphically set forth in a speech to Rev. Bacon by Pondegauwan, a Chippewa chief: "My father, I have spoken to our children, to get them to listen to you, but they tell me that they think they are too foolish to learn. "My father, we think the Great Spirit did not put us on the ground to learn such things as the white people learn. If he had thought it proper, he would have taught us such things when he put us here. My father, we cannot live together so as to attend to these things like the white people. The Great Spirit has given them cattle and everything about them that they want to live upon. If they are hungry they have only to go into their yard and kill a creature. But he gave us no such things. He put us upon the ground to run in the woods to get our living. When we are hungry, we have to go away and hunt to get something to eat. If we set out in the morning, we may have to run all day to find something, and we sometimes have to go without. My father, we hope you will be disposed to give our people such things as they need. And we hope they will do better in future. If it was not for rum, they would like what you have to say to them very well. But rum is our master." Moreover the personal deprivations and discouragements endured by the Rev. and Mrs. Bacon were almost fatal. They lived in a hut nearly uninhabitable, suffered for proper food and clothing, the remittances due them from the Society did not come or were so delayed as to cause loss and distress. Creditors were clamoring for their pay. Two little ones arrived in the family, adding paternal and maternal joys, but increasing the needs and trials of the household. The details constitute a pathetic story. The attempted mission came to an end in the summer of 1804, when orders were received from Hartford for Mr. Bacon to abandon his efforts among the Indians, repair to New Connecti- cut, there await further orders, making meanwhile a report to the Society of his financial affairs. After a journey prolonged by sickness and suffering the family reached Hudson (Ohio), where the wife and children were left and whence Mr. Bacon proceeded on, alone, to Hartford. The Missionary Committee received Mr. Bacon's report, paid him in full for his services as missionary to the Indians and discontinued his labors in that field. David Hud- son, founder of the Western Reserve town bearing his name, and the Revs. Joseph Badger and Thomas Robbins, sort of peripatetic pastors in the Western Reserve, urged the Connecticut Society to place Rev. Bacon in the New Connecticut field. It was done, the Society agreeing to pay half the expense of the newly appointed pastor while the local churches, among which he might administer, were to bear the other half.