DOB/DOD: 1836 * (Burlington, CT) – May 6, 1864 (Wilderness, VA); 28 years old
MARITAL STATUS: Married Angeline E. Shelley (1838-1868) in 1855 in Madison, Connecticut.
CHILDREN: Two daughters, Mary E. (1857-1937) and Jennie M. (1859-?).
ENLISTMENT: July 28, 1862, in New Britain, Connecticut.
DISCHARGE: Mustered in on August 25, 1862, in Hartford, Connecticut.
* The exact Date of Birth is unknown.
FAMILY: Born to Roswell J. (1810-1867) and Betsy E. Smith Bacon (1809-1898). Three brothers, Andrew J. [died of disease while a POW in Florence, South Carolina] (1833-1865), Oliver D. (1841-?), and Charles J. (1846-1846). One sister, Mary E. (1839-1845).
MEDAL OF HONOR CITATION
AWARDED FOR ACTIONS DURING: Civil War
BRANCH OF SERVICE: Army
UNIT: Company F, 14th Connecticut Infantry
DATE OF ISSUE: December 1, 1864 (Posthumous)
AGE ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT: 28
CITATION:
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor (Posthumously) to Private Elijah William Bacon, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 3 July 1863, while serving with Company F, 14th Connecticut Infantry, in action at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the capture of flag of 16th North Carolina regiment (Confederate States of America).
Presentation Date and Details: December 6, 1864, by Major General George G. Meade, at a review of the 2nd Army Corps Headquarters, Peebles’ House, near Petersburg, Virginia. WEBMASTER NOTE: This presentation event took place after Corporal Bacon was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864.
From CivilWarInTheEast.com
The 14th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry Regiment lost 17 officers, 188 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded, and 1 officer and 191 enlisted men by disease during the Civil War. The 14th sustained the largest percentage of loss of any regiment from Connecticut. The regiment is honored by a monument at Gettysburg and another at Antietam. From the Gettysburg Monument:
“Lost in killed and died in the service, 366; wounded and disabled many hundreds. Original muster 1015; recruits 697, final muster of original members, present and absent, 234.”
From the Antietam Monument:
Advanced to this point in a charge about 9:30 A.M., September 17th, 1862, then fell back eighty-eight yards to a cornfield fence and held position heavily engaged nearly two hours; then was sent to the support of the first brigade of its division at the Roulette Lane two hours; then was sent to the extreme left of the first division of this Corps to the support of Brooke’s Brigade and at 5 P.M. was placed in support between the Brigades of Caldwell and Meagher of that Division, overlooking “Bloody Lane,” holding position there until 10 A.M. of the 18th when relieved. The monument stands on the line of Companies B and G near the left of the Regiment. In this battle, the Regiment lost 38 killed and mortally wounded, 88 wounded, and 21 reported missing.
From The Journal (Meriden, CT) October 5, 1887
SOME TYPES OF SOLDIERS
AS THEY APPEARED TO COMRADE GOSS IN OLD WAR DAYS
Pen Pictures That Will be Promptly Recognized by the Men Who Went to the Front a Quarter of a Century Ago – A Tribute to Joe Pierce
I can recall, so vividly, so many types of soldiers that I will devote an article to that subject. As to the types of soldiers, there were so many that an article of a hundred pages, bound in calf, could be written if it would only pay to write it. Don’t tempt me, or I may inflict untold misery upon The Journal readers.
I remember a circumstance that happened at Hatcher’s Run. We had been supporting a battery almost all day on the crest of a sandy hill. Although it was in February, the day was warm, and no snow was on the ground. We had repulsed two determined attacks of the enemy, and they had finally retired beyond a piece of low woodland that sheltered them from our view. The want of water was seriously felt in the afternoon, and some of the men volunteered to take as many canteens as they could carry and try to get some water that we knew must be in the woods at the foot of the hill. Amongst the volunteers was myself. I slung about a dozen canteens around my neck and went down the slope, entered the woods, and found a fine spring of water and around it some dozen or so Yanks. We soon found out that the enemy had retired further than at first thought and that we were in comparative safety. So, we sat, quaffing our fill of Nature’s own remedy for thirst, when we were somewhat startled by the appearance of six stalwart Rebs, emerging from the underbrush without arms, holding up their hands in token of surrender, at the same time calling out “Don’t shoot Yanks: we’es going to give up.”
Of course, we told them to come on, and they did. Soon, we were chatting with them, giving them hard tack – as all old soldiers will do, and were having quite a confab, intending to go back soon, they, of course, going with us. Just then came down Lieutenant – to get water. He was close to us before catching sight of the Johnnies, but as soon as he espied us, he jerked out his toad sticker, threw himself into an attitude of “Come one, come all! These rocks shall fly from their firm base as soon as I!”
…and in thundering tones called out, “Surrender, you d—-d scoundrels,” – well, to have seen the situation would have been a scene for the greatest painter that ever held a brush, not even expecting “Brother Gardner” of the Lime Kiln club. The open-mouthed look, the wild bewilderment of the whole countenance of the Crackers was really amusing, and then the dozen or so of us who knew the situation and who looked at one another with that quizzical look that is habitual with old comrades and those little side scenes that go to make up a whole – take it all in all it was comical.
Lieutenant sternly bade them “Fall in, in single file” and boldly marched them up the sandy slope and turned them over to the provost as “armed prisoners, captured on the skirmish line.” And he was really promoted to captaincy for the brave act. Such is life.
“All is not gold that glitters.” A few days afterward, I sent an account to a Hartford paper, detailing the brilliancy of the charge of our captain’s cook who boldly captured five armed prisoners in the rear – miscreants who were trying to steal away from the Rebs and armed only with a frying pan, he actually coaxed them into camp and gave them their bellyful – which was most deserving of the two? Both of them are actual facts.
I knew another type of soldier, a man who enlisted and died in the service as a private, Elijah W. Bacon of Berlin, Connecticut, a man whose reputation for bravery was never, could never, be questioned: modest, kindly, loving his comrades as they loved him, and yet – the bravest of the brave – he died without shoulder straps when others less deserving got them. I saw him as he fell, facing the enemy, with a smile on his face – genial, kind, and worthy friends.
From The Berlin Herald, New Britain, Connecticut, May 27, 1989.
LOCAL MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER FROM CIVIL WAR REMEMBERED
BERLIN – It was just over a year ago that the Medal of Honor granite marker was placed alongside the grave of Corporal Elijah W. Bacon in Maple Cemetery on Worthington Ridge.
Flush with the ground, the marker was placed in Bacon’s honor nearly 12 years after his death on May 6, 1864, at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia.
The battle was one of the Civil War’s most lethal conflicts, according to Thomas F. Durning Jr., deputy secretary-treasurer of the Connecticut Department, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War.
The organization placed the marker at the Bacon gravesite in Maple Cemetery.
At the top of the marker is an engraving of the Medal of Honor as it now looks, followed by Bacon’s name, the Medal of Honor designation, inscriptions of his unit, and the words “Civil War.” And the date of his death.
Durning said Bacon was one of the 22 Union soldiers in Company F of the 14th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry Regiment who were awarded the Medal of Honor after fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in 1863.
Although Bacon was born in Burlington, he enlisted for Union duty on July 28, 1862, in Berlin.
Durning said the 14th Connecticut mustered into U.S. service on August 23, 1862, and that the performance of the 14th was exceptional among Connecticut’s infantry regiments.
Of the state’s regiments, he said, the 14th was in the greatest number of battles (34) and, in proportion to its size, lost the greatest number of men in combat.
Durning said that in addition to Gettysburg and the Wilderness, the 14th fought in such battles as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg.
According to official records of the Union and Confederate Armies: Series 1, Volumes 27 and 42, Bacon was awarded the Medal of Honor on December 15, 1864, for capturing the flag of the 16th North Carolina and for “gallantry in action and other soldier-like qualities.”
Although Bacon was reported killed at the Battle of the Wilderness, as were many of his fellow infantrymen, his remains are believed to never have been recovered, During said.
He explained that no one knows if Bacon is actually buried in the plot at Maple Cemetery because the remains of many soldiers killed in the Battle of the Wilderness were either consumed by fire or lost in the thick brush.
From The Hartford Courant July 29, 2013
BERLIN — It was a coming-out party Sunday for the solemn brownstone obelisk that for 150 years has stood largely unnoticed outside Kensington Congregational
Church.
Following morning services, parishioners, neighborhood residents, assorted dignitaries, local veterans, and a color guard of Civil War re-enactors led by President Abraham Lincoln turned out in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Kensington Soldier’s Monument, which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the country’s oldest, permanent Civil War monument.
First dedicated on July 28, 1863, the 20-foot-tall memorial was created to honor the memory of six Kensington men who had died by that point in the war. Eleven more names were added as the war continued and the casualties grew.
Four female descendants of one of those named Private Elijah W. Bacon, who died May 6, 1864, and was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for heroism at Gettysburg, lay a ceremonial wreath at the monument.
“Now that it is on the National Register of Historic Places, perhaps it will receive more attention. The attention it deserves,” Senator Richard Blumenthal said, speaking to a gathering of an estimated 150 participants and onlookers.
The very “simplicity and modesty” of the memorial, located at 312 Percival Ave., has caused it to be largely overlooked, Blumenthal said.
“I guess 99.9 percent of people who drive down this busy road have no idea that a monument of historical significance is here.”
A campaign directed by Central Connecticut State University history professor Matthew Warshauer, co-chairman of the Connecticut Civil War Commemoration Commission, culminated on July 3 with the National Register listing. It had been placed on the State Register of Historic Places in April.
Among the approximately 150 Civil War memorials in Connecticut, the Kensington Soldier’s Monument is the only one that was constructed during wartime, and it had a specific purpose, as reflected by its funereal design.
“This is not merely a monument to service. This is a monument specifically to honor those who died during the war,” Warshauer said at the dedication.
Unlike later civic memorials, the Kensington Monument remains under the ownership and care of the church, which celebrated its 300th anniversary last year.
The Rev. Elias Brewster Hilliard, the congregation’s patriotic wartime minister, proposed its construction in late 1862. It was designed by Nelson Augustus Moore, a noted landscape painter and church member, whose original sketch hangs inside the church meetinghouse. The brownstone used was quarried in Portland and brought by an oxen-pulled sled to an East Berlin stone yard where the monument was cut. The cost — $475 — was paid for by the congregation and community residents.
It remains in excellent condition despite being carved from vulnerable brownstone. “The care that has been taken has allowed it to survive these 150 years,” Warshauer said.
To mark its sesquicentennial, a church committee was formed to push for federal
recognition of the monument and plan its re-dedication. A landscape architect was retained to design a memorial garden enclosed by a new decorative, wrought iron fence. The iron fencing that Moore installed around the monument in 1873 was used in the fabrication.
Michael Cavaliere, chairman of the monument committee, said all the preparations were completed just last week. The fencing was installed four days ago, and the surrounding lawn was only just seeded and sprayed. “We’re pretty pleased,” he said.
Honored on the Soldier’s Monument mentioned in the previous article. The monument is at 312 Percival Avenue, Berlin, Connecticut. Photos by Jeff DeWitt.
Honored on a Civil War Monument, 291 Berlin Street, East Berlin, Connecticut. Photo by Jeff DeWitt.
Buried in Maple Cemetery, 1166 Worthington Ridge, Berlin, Connecticut; Section A. Photos by Jeff DeWitt.
END