Fraternal Portrait: Francis H. Bacon

“Furthering through perseverance”

Our brothers’ careers have been productive, constructive, spirited, and prosaic. They displayed impressive skills, talents, and abilities They were, and we continue to be, a beautiful and lively expression of our enduring fraternal beliefs, and that underlying harmony is far-reaching in expectation for all brothers’, undergraduate and graduate. It is the core of what our fraternal founders asserted in 1848 and 1874 and 1899: to live active, commendable, and responsible lives, and to build up community. Clearly and compellingly, they added, and continue to add, positive value at the local, state, national, global, and fraternal level because they engaged life fully and responsibly. In short, they were authoritative pillars throughout life. They were-are exemplary in their citizenship, character, and their sense of dutiful responsibility, and, in many instances, they were leading voices in their career fields. They prove that success of any kind does not occur by luck or accident, and we remember them because they continue to provide that message for our time. We have long been, from one generation to the next, proud to be Omega Mu Fijis. We continue to cherish our fraternal friendships, our shared memories, and our evolving, forward-focused history at the University of Maine. These things, above and beyond everything else, are the underlying rooted connections that make us proud to be Omega Mu Fijis. Why, after all, should we believe otherwise? We have been doing it well since 1874, and we continue to do so now. Perge!

Omega Mu Portrait
Francis H. Bacon, 
​1876

Q.T.V Brothers

Oliver Crosby, 1876

Horace Estabrooke, 1876

Charles Oak, 1876

Maine State College Years

Archeologist

After Francis finished college at M.I.T. , he worked for an architectural firm in Boston, but in 1881 he was asked to join the Harvard archeological team that was going to Assos, Turkey to do extensive excavation work. Assos is just south of Troy, and I am sure a historic time-capsule of thoughts may have gone through Francis’s head as he considered the offer: Patroclus, Achilles, Cassandra, Darius, Xerxes, as well as Luke the Evangelist and Paul the Apostle (Both Luke and Paul visited Assos). Francis gave notice to the architectural firm and joined the Harvard team as the key architectural site draftsman, as well as being second in command. His effectiveness as a leader was unquestioned, and he did a beautiful, comprehensive job as a draftsman. His finished drawings of the Assos site are eye-catching, beautiful, calm, and systematically precise. They are interesting to look at because of their precision and clarity, and they whet the appetite to read about the archeological importance of the site in human history. This experience of working at the Assos archeological site, from 1881-1883, was unique, rich, and profound in meaning for Francis, and he worked for over thirty years to compile and then publish the account of the archeological work done by the Harvard team in 1923, a year before the ceremony dedicating Francis’s marble repository shrine to preserve and protect the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Furthermore, to broaden this great pulse of the historic, Francis’s younger brother, Henry Bacon, designed the Lincoln Memorial. The Bacon brothers have a single, enduring, incalculable legacy in our nation’s history, and one of them is our fraternal brother, Francis H. Bacon, 1876, a fitting fraternal testimony to what we believe as Omega Mu Fijis. In sum, Francis would not be denied in anything he set out to achieve as an archeologist, architect, and designer of furniture. He did everything with consummate skill and attentiveness, creative interest and integrity, and he remains, across all Omega Mu generations, as a fraternal inspiration and a challenge to always remain undaunted, perseverant, and determined. And again, as we all know, that has been our history at the University of Maine, a proud historic truth that continues today with our collective single-mindedness. Perge.

​Bacon's work at Assos, in fact, stretched over a lifetime; at his personal expense he undertook the completion of the full five volumes of the Investigations at Assos after Clarke had abandoned the project under the pressure of family life. Not until 1927 did Bacon finish the task of publication, or as he said, "kiss it Goodbye.”​

Assos Archeological Drawings

Furniture Designer

Francis worked as the principle designer for the Herter Brothers and the A. H. Davenport Company, two furniture companies, before he started the Francis H. Bacon Company, Designers and Manufactures. He exhibited a great of talent with all of his designs, and he emphasized and then translated the ideals of hand-crafted furniture into factory-made furniture. With a great deal of reflective study and thought, many sketches and refined drawings, he introduced many new elements to Colonial Renaissance style in furniture. He helped decorate the Glessner home in Chicago, William H. Vanderbilt’s home on 5th Avenue, New York City; the Warder Mansion in Washington, DC; the Converse Memorial Library in Malden, Massachusetts, and the White House. Because of the unique quality and style of furniture creations, many of Francis’s chairs and tables have been put on display in the MET and the Smithsonian Museums. 

Francis H. Bacon’s Furniture Sketches

Francis H. Bacon’s Furniture

Glessner Home

Vanderbilt Home

Warder Mansion

Converse Memorial Library

The White House

Architect of the Shrine for the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence of the United States

Francis H. Bacon designed the marble repository shrine to preserve and safeguard the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as being open and accessible to the general public. When the repository shrine was dedicated in 1924, President and Mrs Calvin Coolidge were in attendance. 

Calvin Coolidge at Amherst College

On a historical side-note, Francis’s younger brother, Henry Bacon, was the designer the Lincoln Memorial. 

Our Omega Mu Brother, Francis H. Bacon

“What if the space be long and wide,
That parts us from our brother’s side
A soul-joined chain unites our band,
And memory links us hand in hand.”
(Phi Gamma Delta fraternity song)

Fraternally,
Chip Chapman, ’82
​Perge!