1940 Census: O. E. Bacon, age 74, clerk - general store
Lucretia Bacon, age 58
Acreage: 0.30
Contract price: $2,000
Property condemned on April 5, 1941
For the history of this home, click here.
Othaniel Ervin Bacon died on June 2, 1941, long before the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the TNT landowners, so he never received his money. Instead it went to his heirs: Lucretia Bacon, Elsie Howell, Brice Bacon, Muriel Priegel, Robert Bacon, and Elva Seeler.
In his book The Rape of Howell and Hamburg, Donald Muschany quotes a newspaper article entitled "Payment Delayed, Aged Man Dies: TNT Site Owner Succumbed to Worry, Widow Assserts." The article reads as follows: Othaniel Bacon, 82-year-old Howell, Mo., man, who optioned his home to the government for inclusion in the TNT plant site and later was forced by poverty to live in a one-room basement, died Monday as a result, his widow said, of grief and worry over the War Department's holding up payment of the $2,000 sale price.
Bacon wrote many protests to Washington after the War Department ordered purchase options on land for the plant held up when investigation disclosed many prices were "grossly excessive."
Mrs. Bacon said yesterday they vacated their home on signing of the options and paid $50 down to buy a new home. When their government check was not forthcoming, she declared they had to move to a basement, where "he aged in just a few short months."
"He was bedfast three months," Mrs. Bacon said. "Many times at night I could hear him crying from worry and disappointment."
She said $40 of the $50 down payment was recovered, but most of it went to a lawyer for obtaining it. Bacon throughout life was a cripple, due to a knee injury suffered when he was 2 years old, she said.
"The $2000 option money was paid into court pending condemnation proceedings," she asserted. "The price was agreeable to us and the government both, but the court wouldn't release it."
TNT plant officials yesterday granted special permission for Bacon to be buried Thursday in Francis Howell Cemetery, within the plant area, but decreed only relatives could attend and only after obtaining passes.
An attending physician said Bacon's death was due to worry and infirmities.
 |
| Cistern on Bacon property |
 |
| Othaniel E. Bacon is on the right circa 1900. |
