Bacon, Nathaniel, Sr., president of the council and acting governor of Virginia, was baptized at St. Mary, Bury St. Edmund's, August 29, 1620, and died in York county, Virginia, March 16, 1692. His father, Rev. James Bacon, was rector of Burgate, Suffolk, and died August 25, 1670, and his grandfather, Sir James Bacon, of Friston Hall, Suffolk, was first cousin of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. Nathaniel Bacon, the subject of this sketch, was first cousin once removed of Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., "the Rebel." He travelled in France in 1647, and was probably a graduate of Cambridge; came about 1650 to Virginia, where he settled first in Isle of Wight county, and then at "King's Creek," York county, on one of the first tracts of land patented on York river. He was chosen member of the council in 1657, but held the office for only a year; was burgess for York county in 1658-59, and was reappointed to the council in 1660; appointed auditor general March 12, 1675, resigning in Decemer 1687, was president of the council, and as such acting governor during the absence of Lord Howard in New York in the summer of 1684, during his absence on a visit to the southern part of the colony in December, 1687, and in the interval between his departure for England, October 28, 1688, and the arrival of Governor Francis Nicholson, May 16, 1690. He did not approve the course of his young kinsman Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., and it was at his house on King's creek that Sir William Berkeley first put foot to land after his return from the eastern shore in 1676.
Lord Howard had left the colony just before the abdication of James II., and the uncertainty attending affairs in England created something like a panic in Virginia. Rumors of terrible plots of Catholics and Indians were circulated, which President Bacon and his council allayed as far as possible. But the difficulties of maintaining order might have become insuperable, had not the news of the accession of the Prince and Princess of Orange arrived. Colonel Bacon's health was very feeble at this time, and he died March 16, 1692.
As he had no children he bequeathed his estate to his niece Abigail Smith, who married Major Lewis Burwell, of Gloucester county, and has many descendants in Virginia and the south.
