Bacon was born in a frontier log cabin in Tallmadge, Ohio, the youngest daughter of a Congregational minister, who in pursuit of a vision, had abandoned New Haven for the wilds of Ohio. The venture quickly collapsed, and the family returned to New England, where her father died soon after. The impoverished state of their finances permitted only her elder brother Leonard to receive a tertiary education, at Yale, while her own formal education ended when she was fourteen. She became a teacher in schools in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, and then, until about 1852, became a distinguished professional lecturer, conducting, in various Eastern United States cities, classes for women in history and literature by methods she devised. At 20, in 1831, she published her first book, "Tales of the Puritans" anonymously, consisting of three long stories on colonial life. In 1832, she beat Edgar Allan Poe for a short-story prize sponsored by the Philadelphia "Saturday Courier".