Samuel Cornel Bradley
1756-1884

Private
American Revolutionary War

Samuel Cornel (his spelling in a deed of 1781, although many records used "Cromwell" and "Cornell")Bradley . . . had volunteered from Sunderland in June 1775, the month of Bunker Hill and two months after Lexington-Concord. He was a private, a fifer. . . in a company commanded by Captain Gideon Brownson. The regiment was under Seth Warner.

Samuel marched to Ticonderoga (taken in May that year by Ethan Alien and Benedict Arnold), then to the siege of St. Johns, a British military base on Canada's Sorel River which surrendered to the Americans under General Richard Montgomery on November 2, 1775. From there, as he stated in his pension papers, "to Laprairie, hence to Longueuil (across the St. Lawrence from Montreal) and there had a skirmish." Samuel Bradley was among Montgomery's troops that took possession of Montreal on November 13th.

Samuel left the service when his six-month enlistment expired in December. Fifty-eight years later, Eber recollected the length of his brother's service, "(Samuel) went away in warm weather and did not return till winter."

In June 1776, Samuel served for at least twenty-seven days as a corporal in Captain Gideon Brownson's Company "for the Defence of the frontiers of the New Hampshire Grants."

Samuel again volunteered, in April 1778, serving until July in the Rangers under Ebenezer Alien, a distant cousin of Ethan's. The month after, in August, he enlisted for one year as a "minute man in the Militia."

From Eber Bradley (1761-1841)and Some Relatives, page 7