Stained Glass Portrait of Bacon

This 1898 postcard features two colorized photographs, on the left showing the Williamsburg historic powder magazine, and on the right a stained-glass window with an artist’s rendering of Nathaniel Bacon. The postcard was printed to commemorate the installation of the window in the powder magazine. Bacon’s Rebellion, centered in Jamestown, did not have anything to do with the Williamsburg powder magazine, which was a site of relevance to the Revolutionary War. The decision to display the window at that site shows how Bacon’s Rebellion and the American Revolution had become conflated in the public memory at this time. The window is currently displayed at Bacon’s Castle, a large Virginia residence which members of Nathaniel Bacon’s forces seized and occupied during the rebellion.