Why did Newton Bacon take the name Bacon after the Civil War?

Antebellum documents can help us understand why a formerly enslaved African American adopted a particular surname after the Civil War. In 1843, the estate of John Bacon, of Liberty County, was divided among the heirs (for some reason in the Liberty County Superior Court records, not the probate court). The estate included nine enslaved people who had also been named in the John Bacon estate inventory of 1834, allowing us to know where these people were during those nine years and where they went after 1843. One, Newton, was still in the Bacon family in 1851, when he was used as collateral on a promissory note (which was common). From Southern Claims Commission records in the 1870’s, we know that Newton Bacon was owned by Robert Charlton Hines during the Civil War. Without knowing of these earlier records, we might wonder why he chose the surname Bacon.