Chaplain James Henry Bradford, U.S.V.

Chaplain James Henry Bradford, son of Rev. Moses Bradstreet Bradford, was born in Grafton, Vermont, August 24, 1836. On his father's side he was descended from pure Pilgrim stock, being the eighth in direct line from Governor William Bradford, of Plymouth Colony, and through him reaching back three generations more to Rev. John Bradford, chaplain to the queen, afterwards burned at the stake for his religion, at Smithfield, in 1555, with Rogers, Latimer, and others.

Chaplain Bradford's grandfather, Rev. Moses Bradford, was thirty-seven years minister of the town of Francestown, New Hampshire. He was the fifteenth child in a family of twenty, coming from Canterbury, Connecticut. His father also preached nearly thirty years in Grafton. Both of them were men of exalted character and sound common sense. His grandfather on his mother's side, Thomas Dickman, was the first printer and publisher and postmaster in Franklin County, at Greenfield, Massachusetts; founder of the Springfield Gazette, and afterwards of the Hampden Federalist, of Springfield.

James Henry attended the district school and worked on his father's farm in Grafton until about seventeen years of age, when he went to Charleston, South Carolina, into the dry-goods establishment of his brother-in-law, William G. Bancroft, and remained three years under the strict discipline of that princely merchant. One incident of life there was having the yellow fever in 1854.

To acquire a better education he entered Williston Seminary, at East Hampton, Massachusetts, and thence Yale College, and was in the first year of his theological course when the war broke out. He was much interested in the Thirteenth Regiment, quartered in New Haven, but being invited to visit the Twelfth, at Hartford, he was elected chaplain, securing every vote cast. The Twelfth was the only three years' regiment from Connecticut that had but one chaplain.

Chaplain Bradford endeared himself very much to the men of his regiment by closely looking after their welfare. Possessing an excellent constitution, he shared the exposure with the men. When they lived in tents, he did. If they had none, he slept on the ground under the open sky. As a matter of fact, he hardly slept in a bed during the almost three years of his service. He had charge of all mail and express matter, and furnished reading for the men; raised money for a band and purchased the instruments; visited the sick daily, buried the dead, and marked and recorded their resting-place; sent the money home for the boys, at one time at great personal risk, carrying several thousand dollars on his person through the enemy's country to the express office.

After two years in the pastorate he accepted the position of assistant superintendent and chaplain of the Massachusetts State Reform School; afterwards started the Connecticut Industrial School for Girls, and for four years made it the best school of the kind in the country. He was then called to superintend the Massachusetts State Primary School, where he showed excellent judgment in managing its six hundred and fifty inmates and forty officers. After a few months' connection with Howard Mission, New York, he was called to Washington to assist in the religious statistics of the Tenth Census; thence to the Indian Bureau, where he has remained. He was one of the early members of Garfield Post, G. A. R., and has always been its chaplain; served one year as chaplain of the Department of the Potomac; is also chaplain of the Loyal Legion. Chaplain Bradford preaches almost every Sabbath in some vacant pulpit. He has four children living, two sons and two daughters. Mrs. Bradford has become widely known from originating and conducting the famous "Ben-Hur Tableaux."

Source: Officers of the Volunteer Army and Navy who served in the Civil War, published by L.R. Hamersly & Co., 1893, 419 pgs.

Related Links:

• Civil War Records
• Civil War Microfilm at the National Archives
• Bradford Surname

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