Eugenia Jones Bacon papers

In September of 1880 Mrs. Eugenia Jones Bacon of Atlanta, Georgia attended the deci-annual Passion Play in Oberammergau, Bavaria. While there she climbed the mountain Kopfel that overlooks the village and collected some minerals and rocks. Eight years later, after viewing one of the stones in a certain light, noticed that the rough edge on one side showed an image the face of Jesus. Experts of the day investigated, to find that the stone did not appear to have been carved or altered by human hands.

The entrepreneurial Mrs. Bacon called the stone "the Natural Portrait Stone," (also referred to as "the Wonder Stone"). She had the stone exhibited at many places, including the Vatican and Buckingham Palace. Three works about the stone were written by Bacon, including: A Stone from Oberammergau: With a Description of This Wonderful Phenomenon. New York: J. Pott & Co, 1891; The Stone Portrait of the Man of Sorrows, An Ideal of Patient Suffering. London: Lamley, 1896; and The Real Stone Face; or, Suffering Depicted by Nature. Atlanta: Foote & Davies, 1899.

In 1898, Bacon published Lyddy: A Tale of the Old South, a fictionalized memoir of her life, written as a response to Harriett Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery work Uncle Tom's Cabin.