Bishop David William Bacon
ARMS: On a Champagne a church building ( no tinctures )
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS: Arms blazon, background illustration and text are from “Armorial of the American Hierarchy”, Volume III, The New England States, the Ecclesiastical Provinces of Boston and Hartford, pages 52-53, by Brother Gerard Brassard, A.A., The Stobbs Press, Worcester, Mass., 1956. The text was adapted by D.Q. Wedvick from the same source and from the Wikipedia internet article.
Bishop David William Bacon was born on 5 Nov 1813 in New York City. He majored in classical studies at the Sulpician College at Montreal and studied theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He was ordained a priest in Baltimore on 13 Dec 1838 by Archbishop Eccleston of Baltimore. Returning to New York he served on the missions at Utica and Ogdensburg, and then in New York City and at Belleville, New Jersey. In 1841 he was sent to establish the third parish in Brooklyn, and to this end, he bought an unfinished building which he saw to completion and dedicated on June 10, 1842, as the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
On 25 Jan 1855 Pope Pius IX appointed him as the first Bishop of Portland, and he was consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, on 22 April 1855. There were only six priests and eight churches in the Portland diocese, which at that time included the states of Maine and New Hampshire. At his death the diocese contained 63 churches, 52 priests, 23 parish schools, and a Catholic population of about 80,000.
In the summer of 1874 he started for Rome with Archbishop John McCloskey of New York, but having fallen ill on ship-board was forced to remain in the Naval Hospital at Brest until the Archbishop returned, on his way home. Bishop Bacon survived the return to New York but died a few hours later at age 61 with almost 20 years as Bishop of Portland. dqw 20100623
The artwork is a rendering by John Hamilton Gaylor.
Wedvick Armorial, 152a, Bacon, 20100604
