The Charles Bacon House in Louisiana, Missouri is 173 years old: it served as Union headquarters in the Civil War

Historic Charles Bacon House, Louisiana, Missouri.Photo byJim Roberts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Charles Bacon House is a historic home located at 819 Kentucky Street in Louisiana, Missouri (Pike County). This house may not look like it, but it’s around 173 years old having been constructed around 1850!

This two-and-a-half-story house is supported by a foundation of stone and the walls are brick. It has a two-story wood front porch and carries the Greek Revival architectural style. 

This structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 19, 1990. The house is privately owned.

The house

This house is up on a hill above the town and the Mississippi River. It has a one-story rear porch and a two-story wood porch in front. There’s also a door on the second-story porch. 

The interior has a center hall with two rooms on each side. There are original stairways leading up to the second floor. The stairways have walnut handrails and newel posts. 

The Charles Bacon House was used as the local headquarters for the Union during the Civil War.

Louisiana, Missouri

This is the largest and oldest city in Pike County. Its name is derived by the first settlers of southern families, but chiefly from the states of the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia which also have streets bearing those names.

Louisiana and Pike County are within an eight-county area of Missouri known as Little Dixie. At the time Charles Bacon’s house was constructed around 1850, Louisiana was growing into a prosperous river town. It was a shipping point for wheat, livestock, and tobacco which were raised around Pike County. 

Charles Bacon

There is not a lot of information about Charles Bacon. He’s listed in the 1850 census records as a 34-year-old native of the state of New York. He was involved with farming and lived with his wife, Sarah, who was 25 at the time.

Based on deed records, it’s believed Charles was living in Pike County by 1843. He purchased a lot of rural property and during the 1840s and 1850s, he was associated with Democratic politics. In 1846, he was a Pike County delegate to the Democratic Convention.

According to an 1853 church record, Charles was one of the founders of the First Baptist Church in Louisiana. In 1858, he had a fair amount of property. While there are records confirming he owned his house, there’s no record indicating he purchased the land where his house was built although deeds confirm he owned the house. There had also been a fire at the courthouse which destroyed some county deed records.

Also in 1858, Charles deeded his property to a man named James O. Broadhead, and little is known of Charles’ activity after that. However, according to Find-a-Grave, he died four years later. He attended a public meeting in Louisiana in 1860, but he and his family aren’t listed in the Missouri census of that year. It’s possible they moved, and it can be presumed that his wife and children did move after he died.

Charles died at the young age of 45 on November 2, 1862. His wife, Sarah Elizabeth Smith Bacon, died on January 4, 1900, at the age of 74. According to an article in an unknown paper, Sarah died of cancer in California. It also indicated she had three daughters and two sons. While Charles died in Louisiana, Missouri, they are both buried at the San Francisco Columbarium as are some of their children. Interestingly, their daughter, Mae Helene Bacon Boggs, lived to be 100.

In 1865, the house went to German-born George Marzolf, who was involved with farming and moved to Pike County in 1838. When he relocated to Louisiana around 1860, he manufactured tobacco under the company name of Marzolf & Seibert. The Bacon House remained in the Marzolf family until the 1920s.

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