Selden D. Bacon claimed ancestry to Sir Francis Bacon from several generations back. His father, Selden Bacon, was a constitutional attorney who argued against the constitutionality of Prohibition (the 18th amendment) in the Supreme Court of the United States. Bacon was also the son of the author Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon (responsible for the first Girl Scout Guidebook) and first cousin to preacher and writer Leonard Bacon.
