Edmund Bacon (1785–1866)

Edmund Bacon (1785–1866), was the business manager and primary overseer for 20 years for Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, at Monticello.

Among some of his other business duties, Bacon supervised the daily chores and activities of farming and ranching at Monticello along with Jefferson's nail forge.

Hamilton Pierson, who made use of his memoirs and letters to write a book about Jefferson's personal life and character.

When Jefferson became president, he inquired of Bacon's father if William was again interested in being overseer at Monticello, but, being older and involved in other pursuits the offer no longer appealed to his as it once did.

[6] Aside from his pay, Bacon as an overseer was given an allowance of provisions for a year which included six hundred pounds of pork, two barrels of wheat flour and all the corn meal he wanted.

Jefferson summoned Bacon to come to Washington with two servants to help him pack, load and supervise the transport of these things back to Monticello.

The remaining items were loaded into three wagons which Bacon brought up from Monticello and along with the servants drove them back to Jefferson's estate, departing Washington on March ninth or tenth.

[10] Historians have used Bacon's memoirs, records and letters to discern the daily activities at Monticello, as well as Jefferson's personal life and character.

They show that Jefferson began to lose interest in farming after he returned from his ambassadorship to France, and that when he retired in 1794, his agricultural pursuits almost ceased completely.

During this period, Bacon's memoirs record Jefferson's attention to semi-industrial activities, like the production in his nailry, building a new threshing machine, constructing a flour mill and digging a canal at the Rivanna River.

One of the most definitive examples occurred in 1807, when Bacon discovered a large quantity of nails missing when he went to fill a customer's order.

[12][13][14]Bacon's memoirs and eye witness testimony to Reverend Pierson regarding Sally Hemings[b] by many accounts cast considerable doubt on the theory that all of her children were fathered by Thomas Jefferson.

In all the years Bacon worked there, he never saw the two of them together in any capacity that would suggest a sexual liaison, and on several occasions witnessed another man leaving Sally's room early in the morning.

Jefferson initially sent Bacon to examine the three different proposed sites and to obtain the asking prices of each in writing, seal them up in an envelope and return them to him promptly.

[21] Later, during the 1860s, Reverend Hamilton W. Pierson, then president of Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, learned of Bacon's presence nearby.