The Reverend Thomas Bacon, one of colonial Maryland's most prolific authors, is remembered today primarily for his sermons on charity schools and the education of slaves, and for his compilation Laws of Maryland At Large ... (1765). In his own day he was also known as a poet of modest abilities, a political essayist worthy of defending Lord Baltimore's proprietary party against Franklin's attacks, and an outstanding musician. Other than the fact that he was raised in Ireland (perhaps Dublin, where his brother, Anthony Bacon, M.P., attended Trinity College), little is known about Bacon's early life. Records show that he was working for the Custom House in Dublin by 1737 and that he began publishing the Dublin Mercury, a biweekly newspaper, by 23 January 1742. By 27 September 1742, Bacon was printing the official newspaper of Ireland, the Dublin Gazette, which he published only until 12 July 1743, when he began preparing for the ministry.
Following in his brother's footsteps, the Reverend Thomas Bacon sailed to America in June 1745 and shortly thereafter was appointed rector of St. Peter's, Talbot County, by the governor of Maryland, Thomas Bladen. During that time, Bacon was elected an honorary member of Dr. Alexander Hamilton's Tuesday Club of Annapolis (Bacon appears frequently as "Signior Lardini" in Hamilton's 1,900-page mock epic, The History of the Tuesday Club), where he was appointed club musician con stromenti. Bacon had a large hand in composing most of the Tuesday Club's music (much of which appears in Hamilton's The History of the Tuesday Club), and was so distinguished a musician that the other club members sometimes deferred performing their songs and odes until he was present. In the summer of 1755 Bacon's wife died, and soon thereafter a mulatto, Rachel Beck, accused him of rape. Bacon sued her for libel and won, but in the spring of 1756 disaster again struck when his only son, John ("John Gabble" in The History of the Tuesday Club), was killed and scalped during a march of the Independent Maryland Foot Company against the French at the Ohio. Toward the end of 1758, however, Bacon's life took a turn for the better when he was appointed minister of All Saints, Frederick County (at that time the most lucrative parish in Maryland), and shortly before his death in 1768 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Bacon published numerous sermons and essays while he was living in Maryland. The more significant ones included Two Sermons, Preached to a Congregation of Black Slaves ... (1749) and Four Sermons, Upon the Great and Indispensible Duty of All Christian Masters and Mistresses to Bring Up Their Negro Slaves in the Knowledge and Fear of God ... (1750). These sermons, like his efforts to establish a charity school in Talbot County, evidence Bacon's sincere efforts throughout his ministerial career to help the poor. But Bacon is best remembered by historians for compiling the Laws of Maryland ... and for his hand (along with Cecilius Calvert) in An Answer to the Queries on the Proprietary Government of Maryland (1764), which was designed to anticipate and fend off negative criticism of Lord Baltimore's administration. These works, along with his participation in the Tuesday Club, made Bacon a vital political and cultural force in colonial Maryland.
