Eber Bradley - Chapter V

Chapter V

"Union Forever*' is the Only Voice

In the summer of 1860, the Census reported on Bradleys in Williston:

Eli Judson, fifty-six, and Sarah, sixty, declared real estate at $'700 and personal estate at $500. Although he had been selling stoves, he reported himself only as a farmer.

Neighbors were Phoebe Bradley Corning, seventy-four, her husband, John, seventy-seven, carpenter, with $1,500 in real estate, $200 in personal.

Timothy Meigs Bradley, sixty-seven, farmer, owned $1,500 real and $100 in personal estates. A day laborer, Luther Davis, shared his home.

In Jericho, Myron's intended, Clara Dixon, twenty-four, music teacher, lived with her parents, L. M. and Eliza Dixon, as were their son Ashton C. Dixon, twenty-one, attorney, and his recently acquired wife, Columbia, twenty. The elder Dixon reported $1100 in real estate, $100 in personal.

Albert Bradley, twenty-one and Eli and Sally's next-to-youngest son, was a laborer in Burlington.

In Lucas County, Eber was thirty-two, a farmer, with real estate at $1000 and personal property of $1500. Cyntha was twenty-six, Wlllie W. three, and Albert J. eight months.

Hiram, twenty-five, farming, owned real estate at $800 and listed no personal estate. Josiah Farrington, thirty-two, farmer, and his wife "Ann" (Arranda), thirty-three, had $2000 in real estate, $600 in personal. Neighbors reported included Isiah Walker, Wesley Bradley, farmer, his wife Mary E., and son Orville W.

With his family growing, Eber was interested enough in the -1861 pricelist of Howden, Colby and Company, Waterbury, Vermont, for baby carriages to keep it among his papers. Top price was eight dollars for a "Fancy Cab, Cushioned and Trimmed."

The first reference in the family papers to the coming Civil War was in James Clark's letter dated January 8, 1860, from his Waynesburg home. "There geting up a Military Company up

around here." James Buchanan was President, Lincoln's election ten months in the future.

Cyntha's fourteen-year-old sister Lydia, in Vermont, acknowledged (January 22, 1860) receiving a picture of the late John Brown. The gift of the photograph suggests in what high regard Eber held the abolitionist hero. Vermont was strongly anti-slavery by the state constitution as well as by popular feeling. However, a Unitarian minister, Joshua Young, who preached at John Brown's funeral, was promptly dismissed from his Burlington pulpit.

Among Eber's disgruntled customers was one in Findlay, Ohio, P. D. Bigelow, who wrote (February 9, 1860) to complain about a buck he had purchased. On the plus side, the sheep dealer's Uncle Timothy sent him $50, as Eli Judson wrote (February 22), "towards paying your claim, $20 from his old shop and 30 for his standing grass which I bought of him. His old hay sold for $29.00 which he lives on."

Although in favor of independence in general, Eli thought his older brother, nearly seventy-two, carried that proud pioneer virtue too far. "We have tryed to get him down with us this winter, twice, our very best but he would not come." Then in exasperation, "He prefers a miserable independence."

He described his own work, "I am still in my business stove-ing it all about."

By March 25 farm-hand James Clark had joined the volunteer company he had written about two months earlier. He was as willing as Eber to take a hand in the juggling of notes: "If you (have) a minute send me Mackees note. I will take it. He has got a Colt I would like to Buy.''

James declared that a report of Eber's fistic prowess had reached all the way to Crawford County. The story he told was that Eber's opponent had taken such a mauling that "it took them two days to dig him out of the sand.'' The story sounds apocryphal if, indeed, James did not concoct it then and there to enliven his letter.

Occasionally, Hiram took to the road with their sheep. Clark was feeling "spunky "at him on March 30 for not stopping at the Clarks with his sheep while in their neighborhood. James allegedly was considering matrimony. "Tell Cyntha that I want her to hunt me a wife. She can handy.''

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The next month, Eber was the traveler. From the sheep farm, Hiram, addressing him with vast formality as "Mr. Bradley, Sir,'' informed his about the farm:

My garden shines about as bright as the Dollar you offered for tending it.. I sheared Willie's lamb the first morning after you left...Please send me Three or Four dollars when you write to Cyntha the first time for I shall melt or be sick a wearing lined and stuffed woolen Clothes this wether.

He closed the letter with heavy sarcasm, “Your Obed' t Servt, Hiram."

James Clark was apparently only joshing on April 10 when he "revealed" his marriage:

I must let you know that I am married and I will not bring her along because I am so bashful. I am afraid some of the girls will take me up for breach of Promise.

In typical hyperbole he reported a rain in Crawford County, "We have one of Noah floods here now.'' By May 27 he was working on the Bradleys' farm. Hiram wrote

to Eber that the farm hand was talking about quitting to work for another farmer "three times a day but I tell him I can't spare him and don't mind much about what he says."

In the same communication, her. son-in-law learned that Mrs. Farrington was to visit the Elliotts for a while. “Granny has got another letter from V.T. with $15.00 in it and a great pressing to hurry along. She is to start day after tomorrow.''

Despite his quarrels with Harmon, Myron, and Hiram, the idea of having a brother working with him appealed to Eber. Albert wrote from Burlington in June 1860 to thank him for his offer, obliquely declining it:

Only the 2nd year (of apprenticeship) now & I have $11.00 per month & it would make your eyes stick out to see what I can mold.. .If I was at work on a Job now I could earn $2.00 a day, this is a grand trade.

Five months in Vermont were enough for Mrs. Farrington. She was ready to return to Ohio as Eli Judson wrote in mid-October. Timothy Meigs was becoming a worry to him and Sally. While the old gentleman probably still preferred his "miserable independence, "he was becoming "very dependent and although worth 4 or 5 hundred dollars we must have a constant care of him or we shall find him dead." Timothy wanted to send his nephew ten or twenty dollars on his debt; Ell asked whether he should send the money or “shall I pay it to Uncle Sanford?''

Ezbon Sanford was more distant from the Bradleys than In the earlier years. After the deaths of Polly Bradley Sanford and her successor, Diana, he had married Mary Chapin in 1857.

There was one complaint Eli had that must be shared by anyone who has tried to read Eber's scribble:

We have never been able to make out fully the last letter. 1/2 day would not suffice without guessing at much of it & our eyes are getting old & our hands too weak to study so pity us & do better in time to come.

Whether to take that ten or twenty dollars from Timothy or apply it on Uncle Sanford's over-due claim, must have tempted Eber who was in his normal financial difficulties. Mr. Halliwell informed him in December 1860 that he could not repay his loan or note "before sheering time." Halliwell know who was to blame: "Now as for Lincoln he is elected But the Democrats Became so Disapointed that the south has closed all the Banks and that makes money rather scarce at present.''

Money had indeed dried up, especially in the South. A stock beeeder of Paris, Kentucky, trying to sell mules in Virginia, encountered such a dismal market that he wrote back home in February 1861, " It makes me sick to look at a mule." ²

The situation did not clear up in a hurry. Months later, in July 1861, a friend, Dizzy B. Walker, wrote the Bradleys from Cambridge in Guernsey County, Ohio that there was' 'no money in circulation hardly .. .one farmer tried to sell wheat for money in Cambridge last week and had to bring it home again.''

A Lucas County map in 1861 showed Eber as the owner of two eighty-acre tracts, one on the NE corner of Ramm and Whitehouse-Spencer roads, another on the Monclova Road in Swanton Township. Hiram had eighty acres on the Ramm Road near his brother's holding. Josiah Farrington owned eighty acres that straddled the Wabash and Western Railroad near Heller Road. His future father-in-law, J. F. C. Burnette had over 150 acres on the south side of Swan Creek in the vicinity of Finzel and Cemetery Roads. ³

For his business dealings and correspondence, Eber had a printed letterhead which featured a picture of an impressive merino buck and the heading, "Eber Bradley — Breeder and Dealer in - AMERICAN MERINO SHEEP - (Spanish Blood) -

Whitehouse, Lucas Co., O."

In Missouri, Charles and Martha's first child, Eli Williamson, was born in January 1861, "in a sod house" according to a note in the family records. Sod houses were to the western plains what log cabins had been to settlers in more forested regions. Timber was scarce and expensive so pioneers commonly built their homes by plowing up sod, chopping it into strips, and laying the strips one on another like bricks. The homes were not usually spacious. One farmer in Blaine County, Nebraska, lived in a sod house built by his homesteading father in 1885. It was sixteen by twenty-five feet.⁴

Rumors picked up considerable of the spectacular between White house and the Clark home in Waynesburg. James' mother, Emeline, passed along one (January 19, 1861), "We heard that Eber was in the Army that he was Colonel of a regiment.'' She had other rumors: "We heard Hiram was Marled and then we heard he was dead." Mrs. Clark had the facts straight on one matter-James had been in Company D of the 25th Ohio Regiment for at least three months without, she complained, one word from him.

A sheep customer, Oben Whitcomb, Sullivan, Ashland County, on February 25, 1861, had nothing but good things to say about sheep he had bought. What he called "The Southern panic" was stirring up excitement around Sullivan. He figured that'' Some are determined to have war ... I hope not." He had given Eber a pistol to sell. Get it sold, he urged. Otherwise, "keep it in order so in case we have to go south for war then take it along, ha ha." Whitcomb's "ha ha" might have had a hollow sound. Texas seceded that month and Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated as head of the rapidly arming Confederacy.

Selling patent rights was still a going business. Late in March,

John wrote from Waterbury about a Baxter Whitney who was in Ohio from Vermont selling patent rights for a clothes wringer. John thought well of the device. Although working with Whitney in promoting patent sales, he warned his brother, "I do not advise you to buy territory . . . make them let you have it on commission.'' On the domestic front, he reported that son Myron Clyde was two and a half years old. His older son, Carlos, had died in January at four years of age.

Fort Sumter had been taken by the Confederates a month before Eli and Sally wrote in May, "Young men have gone from our

village under age and are now officers in Service." Perhaps because of ominous clouds of impending war in Missouri, Minnie was returning to her home, stopping by Lucas County on the way. Their parents begged, "Now Eber and Hiram don't be selfish and keep her there too long but let her fly home."

While Minnie was in Whitehouse, Cyntha would be celebrating the marriage, in distant Jericho, Vermont, of her sixteen-year-old sister, Lydia, to Jonathan Barney, a member of a well-respected family in the area. ⁵

Charles and Martha, with their five-month-old baby, were dismayed by the troops around their home in Syracuse, Missouri.

On June 21,1861 he wrote:

The Missouri State troops left this place yesterday and in about four hours more the Government troops occupied the same ground...Oh! the Horrors of an internecine Civil War... Peacable citizens have thus far protected us from the ire of ultra men.

Letterhead with a patriotic motif was Henry Bradley's writing paper when he wrote (June 22) from Montpelier, including a multicolored drawing of Columbia with a sword in one hand and an American flag on a staff in the other. He wanted to visit Ohio "where Eli-ites thrive so well." He added, "Minnie calls it Bradley-ville." He was looking forward to her return home the next week, proudly commenting that their sister was capable of making the Missouri-Vermont trip unescorted "for she has got grit and Spunk. My Employer would call it Pluck."

He inquired about Myron. "Do you know how he feels on the War question? Is he a Democrat still or will he uphold the Stars and Stripes or is he Silent? The Union forever is the only voice here."

Newspapers kept him current on war news. "We have two daily papers published in Montpelier, we take the Daily Morning Journal (Boston) and one Burlington daily." Although a sincere Unionist, he was not ready to enlist:

The 2nd Regiment from Vermont started on Monday the 24th for Washington. The 3rd Regiment are in camp in St. Johnsbury. There are enough that are glad of a chance & think it the easyest way of getting money without me.. .1 have a good home here. Am happy as a clam in the mud. From Sacramento (June 24, 1861), Democrat or not, Myron estimated that eight-tenths of that part of the country was for the Union. The pony express, started two months before, made the run from Missouri to California in only eight to ten days, but he did not expect that modern communication system to bring

welcome news. "We look for the next pony express with much solicitude, expecting a collision." Emigration from the eastern states was extensive, "Some coming to avoid the war others to settle in a country where they imagine they will speedily accumulate an immence fortune and others come to a place they think they can enjoy more liberty.''

He was employed by Mr. B. A. Farr at The Telegraph House, a hotel on J Street between 12th and 13th.6 The hotel's name was up-to-date: Western Union had been organized only five years before, in 1856.

The Army had James Clark and he was not pleased. From Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio (July 9, 1861), he had his complaints:

I have been in Camp Chase about five weeks. I like Camp life as well as a cat to eat hot soap. They do not give us our rights. They are midling saving of there provisions.

Ohio regiments had been in battles in Virginia, bringing Southern prisoners to Camp Chase. James had mixed feelings about the Secessionists, They are nice looking men, some of the, but they are rebels." Then a touch of self-interest punctured his patriotism, "I am going to have me a gold watch from some of the

southerners."

Although Clark did not like Army, Ohioans were volunteering so fast as to overwhelm facilities for inducting and providing minimal training for the recruits. Ohio's Governor Dennison (April 22, 1861) implored Washington to accept more than the thirteen regiments required in the April 15th call for troops, "I can hardly stop short of twenty regiments.''

After her visit in Ohio, on the way home from Missouri, Minnie Mariah was safe in Vermont when she addressed her letter of July 21 to "My Darling Brothers, Sister and little nepheys!" Many visitors had been at her parent's home. Clara Dixon, Henry, Uncle Sanford, John and Lizzie and Clyde. Minnie met John's bride. Lizzie Goodrich, for the first time since their marriage (John's second) on August 7, 1860. "I am taller than Lizzie. She is fair as a pure white lily and as stout, weighs 84 pounds and has the tiniest hands and feet ever worn. She is a beauty and Clyde (Myron Clyde, John's son by the late Frances) loves her to death.''

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She was eager to get to work, looking forward to a "situation" at the Union School in Montpeller that Henry had promised to get for her. Minnie was worried about something else. “Not a word from Nye. I think he is dead and I am going to die too if no word comes soon!! " (Nye was probably a beau of hers from her Missouri sojourn.) There was an enthusiastic word about her future sister-in-law, Clara Dixon, who "dresses elegantly and I

am glad of it."

A widower since the death of Araadna in September 1861, Josiah Farrington enlisted in July 1862 in the 14th Regiment of the Ohio Infantry and was elected Lieutenant by Company I. He left behind his eight-year-old daughter Araadna, always known as "Addie," three-year-old son Ambrose ("Bose"), and his mother, with Cyntha and Eber.

Company I of the 14th was presumably organized like most other regiments with one captain, one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, five sergeants, three corporals, two musicians, one wagoner, and from sixty-five to eighty-two privates. A novice in military affairs, Josiah must have had his hands full as the second in command of Company I.

His first letter home (July 27, 1861) from Camp Chase, to ."Dear Mother, Brother and Sister and Children," reported a busy life in camp and the arrival of twenty prisoners, "seceshers" he called them. Union soldiers brought back war trophies from early battles, "Some of the boys bring back mules, some clothes, some niggers, guns &C that they havecaptured.''

The two Farrington youngsters, their father away at war, were not overlooked in Minnie's letter of August 4, "My Dear Brothers, Sister, and Nephews not forgetting Mrs. Farrington or those dear little ones, Addie and Bosie." Financially, everyone in the Vermont wool business was in deep trouble; people on the Island were "entirely destitute of money . . . having like you, depended on wool.'' Eber's pride could not have been assuaged by his sister's assurance that "Father and Mother feel so badly about your affairs and pity you so much and love you more than if you were perfectly wealthy I know." This was the period that A. J. Bradley described, over seventy years later, as when the ' * bottom fell out of the wool market."

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There were continued worries by twenty-four-year-old Minnie about her Mr. Nye, "surrounded by war and trouble . . . and has had to watch day and night for fear of being murdered by the rebels." The description fits the Missouri situation precisely. "We correspond now as friends ... just right for the times."

In closing she was specific as to whom she sent her love:

Willie, Addie, Bossie, Mrs. Farrington, Hiram, "the little redhead" (Albert Josiah, not quite two), and Aunt Mary.

Later in the month (August 23), his father told Eber and Cyntha that he was still getting all over the country except on Sunday when he had nine o'clock meeting, then Sabbath School, and five o'clock prayer meeting.

Accompanying her father's letter, Minnie sent a note asking that they "give my love to Miss Fanny—or our sister Fannie, Josiah's Fannie." So his intention to marry the sister of his late wife was known to the families although the marriage did not take place until the next January.

The Bradley home in Vermont was a mecca for visitors. Among recent guests had been Uncle John and Aunt Phoebe Corning. "Aunt P. sat in her rocking chair and two poles (we daren't call 'em rails!!) were under the seat, and two men before, and two behind, toted her over.''

She was impressed by a social affair she had attended the previous night at Chauncey Brownell's, describing it with her typical spontaneity:

They live in style at Brownell's. Delia Brownell said she counted seventy-six present! Had a fiddler from Richmond! Some danced in the dining room. Parcels played whist-euchre-backgammon-checkers AC-while the rest of us played the piano & sang.

Minnie Mariah also solemnly announced, "Uncle John's cow's funeral took place on Saturday last!''

Letters from her were written from top to bottom on the stationery; then, if there was more to say, she turned the page half-way around to write additional paragraphs "across the grain" over the previous longhand- Not difficult to read, it conserved letter paper which cost about eights cents a sheet in the 1850's.

Farrington and his regiment had left Camp Chase by October 1861, moving into Kentucky and Camp Dick Robinson in Garrard County, almost exactly in mid-Kentucky, which had been established two months before. On the sixth he mentioned that

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a soldier, caught sleeping while on guard, would probably be shot. (Almost certainly, the offender was not; only six Ohio soldiers were executed by U. S. Military authorities during the war and there is no record of a Civil War soldier paying the death penalty for sleeping on sentry duty.)

An expected engagement with the southern general, Felix Zollicoffer, had not materialized. On less martial matters, Ambrose got fatherly advice, "Tell him to be a good boy and mind his Grand Ma and Uncle Eber and Aunt Cyntha.''

Collecting debts was a continuing frustration for Bozie's Uncle Eber. A Mrs. Powers explained (October 29, 1861) that she had no money to send because her husband had joined the Army. If it was any solace, Mrs. Powers admitted that the note "is due and aught to have ben paid.''

For a busy soldier, Farrington proved to be a dependable correspondent. His letter of November 3 was on war-time letterhead with "Union!" topping the page in half-inch letters and an eagle with a stars-and-stripes emblem, probably a best seller among the supplies sold by the camp's sutlers. He was in Camp Calvert, near London, Kentucky, southeast of Camp Robinson. The inhabitants, "very much alarmed (were) moveing their families into the country.''

He reported on the battle at Camp Wild Cat, nine miles NW of London, on October 21, claiming for the 14th Regiment the honor of "saving the Federal forces from destruction." Although the 14th had not been all that important, it was certainly a Union victory. The Confederates suffered twenty-one dead, forty-two wounded, the Union only four dead and twenty wounded.

Sickness was rampant among the troops. "Capt. (John W.) McCabe has regained his health and joined his Company. (Second) Lieut. (Alexander) Walp is rather out of health. He is troubled with the Chill Fever...3 or four are sick with the Measles."

Diseases most prevalent in the Federal armies were dysentery (which, together with arthritis from which he never fully recovered, ended Farrington's Army service), typhoid fever, arthritis (which two invalided Henry Bradley), malaria (frequently called ague), pneumonia, measles, and malnutrition.

About 225,000 died of disease in the Union armies, 110,000 of wounds. In the 14th Ohio, 189 died of disease during the war, 146

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killed or died of wounds. In Vermont's 10th Regiment where Henry Bradley served, 153 died of disease, 141 died in action or of wounds.

In October, Hiram visited Vermont. His letter (November 3) told of a few difficulties. Although he had intended to take a boat from Toledo, he missed his connection and took the train instead. Buying a ticket to Burlington, he "jumped aboard the ten o'clock train on Wednesday and at ten Thursday nite I was visiting with Mother and Minnie as hard and fast as I could.'' He itemized his

"bill of fare and RR bill"—

Pair boots at Whitehouse 2.50

From White House to Toledo on cars .50

Got a cab at Toledo .62

From Toledo to Burlington 18.15

From Burlington to Williston .45

Crackers & Cheese & Apples through .57

Total distance, 918 miles 22.79

"t tell you Eber, "his brother concluded, "I was glad I took it by R R instead of boat. The waves rolled high as the chamber windows of your house. Nevertheless I should have gone by boat if

there had been one or any prospect of one before Friday.''

Apparently he was trying to justify traveling by rail rather than

be the cheaper water route. Deck passage on a boat, for example, cost approximately three dollars from Buffalo to Detroit. Railroads were also comparatively new means of transportation. Chittenden County's first railroad had come only twelve years before and rail travel was still a high risk with numerous crashes, fires, collapsed bridges, head-ons, and boiler explosions.

The trip left Hiram, who had started out with thirty dollars, with exactly $7.21. He would have to earn money in Williston to buy needed clothes including pants at, he estimated, $6.00, shirts and drawers $2.00, and an every-day coat $4.00.

Their Uncle Ezbon Sanford was not all satisfied with the forty dollars Eber had recently paid on his long-standing debt. His uncle sent a message that he was in no hurry about the principle, but the Interest must be paid, spelling out that it would come to $125 by the next June. Considering the amount over-due to Sanford, the demand by another Vermont creditor that Eber pay him three dollars must have seemed almost niggling.

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place here, a large white house and green blinds to windows and doors also."

That fall, Eber wanted work done "in the mason line," as he wrote to a "Friend Preston" (November 25,1861), including "an ashery and smokehouse" as well as underpinning for his home's wash-shed and kitchen. Preston owed him money which would be figured in. Prospects of getting work or money were dimmed when the letter was returned by the Post Office, addressee unknown. The ashery would have been used to leach out lye from wood ashes, the lye boiled with grease to produce soap.

Still in Vermont, Hiram wrote a week before Christmas in 1861 that brother John "gets five hundred per year at Waterbery clerking it." Hiram had been in Jonesville, a Chittenden County hamlet, where a friend had bought 150 acres. The Ohio visitor was unimpressed:

He owns a good share of the Green Mountain range, says those rocks are worth $35.00 per acre. I told him 35 cts per acre.

The farming potential in his native state did not look attractive, Hiram facetiously suggesting that Cousin Wesley move there from Lucas County if he wanted to "raise little Yankee nubbins of corn must as big as their fingers."

The war news from Hiram was that the Vermont Cavalry had just left Burlington for Washington, D. C. "It took 120 cars to carry the soldiers and horses and baggage. Cousin Henry Wheeler is one."

He was gratified to have received two recent letters from "Mother's tall boy, Josiah." Si Farrington was well above average height for his generation, about six feet two inches.

Four days after Christmas, the tall boy wrote from Camp Kentucky that he was the only officer in Company I fit for duty so he had to "fly around like an old woman with a large family with two at the breast.''

War pressures on Charles and his family in Missouri had grown worse by late December 1861. On a letterhead featuring a knight in armor standing on a solid rock labeled "Columbia," an American eagle, and "E Pluribus Unum," he endorsed the sentiment with a scribbled note next to it, "This looks good. C. S.

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B." Despite his Unionism, the Federal troops had killed several of his hogs and burned his fences for their camp fires. More than

that.

Although they know me to be a real Loyal subject as any of them yet they

came in my absence & took my schoolroom which is the lower part of my house & put 30 or 40 sick in it & as it broke up my school & forced me from employment to live in a hospital I...went to General (John) Pope...but got no satisfaction but rather was pretty roughly answered.

History has not dealt gently with General Pope's personality. Over-confident and pugnacious have been popular descriptions.

Charles did not exaggerate at all the bitterness of the fighting in the state. The month he wrote, there were three or four engagements between Union and Missouri state troops. In all, 1162 Civil War battles or skirmishes were fought in the Show Me state, exceeded only by Virginia and Tennessee. Missouri citizens were victimized by Unionists and Secessionists alike. Towns were looted, homes torched, and men suspected of favoring the other side murdered on their own doorsteps.

"Trouble does not make the people here better," Charles dispaired, "but I think almost infinitely worse." Getting away, probably to Ohio, was foremost in his thoughts. He summed up his experiences, "There is too much private shooting in this quarter to suit me.''

Eber had offered Josiah some proposition or another for investing in land. His brother-in-law, no stranger to Eber's freewheeling financing, declined the opportunity from Russell County, in south-central Kentucky (January 12, 1861), "I do not care about investing in lands at Present." He had other and pressing concerns including the prospects of a battle: "There will be a Force of about Eighteen thousand on the side of the union and according to Report some Fifteen thousand of the Enemys."

(Farrington kept a diary of his Civil War activities from February to June 1862. Extensive excerpts from the diary as well as from his Army letters have been published in The Northwest Quarterly, Maumee Valley Historical Society, in the Summer 1977 issue. Quotations from the diary would not materially advance the story of the Bradley family so excerpts from only his letters have been used in this account.)

Company I of the 14th Ohio was moving too fast for Hiram to keep track of. Still visiting in Chittenden County, he wrote his

brother in Ohio (January 25), "Please let me know where Josiah is. I lost track of him."

He was " haveing a good time generally. We had a good oyster Supper. Self and Girl attended. One hundred and fifty couples took Oysters." Albert was working at the Carlton Store in Underbill, Henry at the clothing store in Montpelier. Minnie expected Myron from California in June to marry Clara Dixon;

she was thinking about going back with them. Albert was also talking about going to California despite Hiram's efforts to convince him that his best future would be around Whitehouse.

The Vermonters heard from Charles often enough to understand that the situation in warring Missouri was untenable. Hiram offered suggestions if his brother moved to Ohio. "If you could not better him, I would like to board with him on my place and work on my place and elsewhere. Lets get him there any how."

Northwestern Ohio's comparatively mild weather had softened Hiram. "Frigid" was his word for Chittenden County. "Tell Wes and Mary it is cold enough here to freeze bats. I dress for it I do." His time-table for returning remained a little vague, "I intend to see you all ere long at the longest."

Charles finally made his decision. He was moving to Ohio. From Syracuse, Missouri he wrote to Eber on Sunday, February 9, 1862, that he would be in Whitehouse the last of the following week. His two cows and most of the household furnishings were

already sold. Martha was paying her farewell visit to her father.

Considering devoting himself to church work, Charles hoped that "Methodism is more flourishing and pure there than when I was there at teaching." His Missourian wife, whom he described as quiet and retiring, was a bit apprehensive about Ohio. "She used to wonder if the most of northern people are hotheaded Abolitionists Ac Ac." He politely cautioned his Yankee kin and kith, "She will watch closely fro the first few months but I hope she may get a very good impression of northern people and life.''

Either Eber or Cyntha had referred to Charles and Martha's "babies" although they had only EU. Charles chlded them good-naturedly, "You might have left off that 's' from 'baby' with perfect safety and not have used partiality.''

About the time scheduled for the arrival of Charles' family, Hiram expressed his satisfaction over their move. "I mean to fix up the old house and Charley and I live there next summer." At the moment, Hiram was staying with his parents who also had Uncle Timothy Meigs with them. Eli Judson was, as usual, "out selling stoves, home every week." He had a new supplier in Troy, who sold him stoves much cheaper.

Timothy Meigs Bradley had not aged into a loveable old codger. His visiting nephew called him "mean." Specifically, "He says when he dies then we can all devide up his property but he is agoing to let his creditors go to grass for their pay and sponge his living out of Father then die and let people scratch for their pay." This drastic personality change in formerly independent Timothy Meigs suggests a "silent stroke" as he approached his seventy-fourth birthday.

From California, in February 1862, Myron allowed himself to

indulge in recommending business maxims to Eber:

Buy what you can pay for & pay when you buy it...Never get more business on hand than you can manage yourself...When money begins to circulate limitedly begin to limit your business...Take every precaution to keep the confidence of the business community...

All of them were sound business practices and there is no evidence that Eber ever followed any of them.

The hotel business in Sacramento was not all peaches and cream. Times were hard in California as well as Ohio and Vermont. Five floods in six weeks had left from two to five feet of water in the lobby of The Telegraph House; five times they had moved everything to the second floor. The hotel had $16,000 outstanding in accounts and notes. Myron, although tempted to go to "the Salmon River (Idaho) diggins this spring and try my luck for a sudden fortune," resolved to stick to his job and collect debts:

I will show some of them a warm trick if they do not come out I tell you. I have got on hand now which I took in debt 7 Horses & equippage, 4 waggons & 9 yoke of oxen &c and if more of them do not come out we will fill up the stable with stock.

His little nephews, Ambrose and Albert, were infected by the war fever. Their uncle wrote, "I would like much to see Albert marching his regiment around. That red bed has got the pluck but I should think Bozie would turn around and hit him on the head Sometime.”

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The Charles Bradley family was welcomed in Hiram's letter dated March 11. "Charley and Martha my best wishes to you in your new home." He was having trouble raking up enough cash to get back to his farm in Ohio.

Perhaps Eber felt a twinge of empathy for his creditors who were trying hard to collect money from him—more than a few people also owed him money and could not pay. From Spring Hill, Tennessee, Lieutenant Farrington wrote (March 27, 1862) that IsiahT. Walker, a Whitehouse neighbor, sent his compliments. "He wants you to send the amount of the balance he owes you and he will send it when he is paid off again." (Sergeant Walker, twenty-six, died in December 1863 from wounds suffered at the Battle of Missionary Ridge; his dependent mother was awarded a pension of eight dollars a month.)

A M. Opdyke had no promises at all when he wrote from Montpelier in April, "Intended to send some (money) in this letter but cannot on account of not having it to send am sorry for it had or to been paid before."

In his letter mentioning Sergeant Walker, Josiah commented on Good and Evil around Whitehouse, about which he had forebodings, explaining, "Therefore I assisted in erecting the much talked of church." This was almost certainly the First or Union church where at least three Protestant sects worshipped. Well built of log sills and old-fashioned barn frame, it cost $606.607 and presumably was where Charles Sanford Bradley preached for a time.

The Battle of Shiloh had been a near-miss for the 14th Ohio. Josiah wrote on April 14th from Pittsburg, Landing, Tennessee, that he had seen 168 bodies in one grave, 60 horses in a pile and 30 in another, casualties of the "Battle of the 6 & 7," later called Pittsburg Landing or Shiloh. The Landing amounted to a wharf and a log cabin on the west side of the Tennessee River. Two or three miles into the woods was a small Methodist meeting-house, Shiloh church.

The Ohio regiment, a few days after the battle, was sent into Alabama where the troops burned bridges, killed four Rebels, and took prisoners.

The Battle of Shiloh was saved for the Union by the arrival of General Don Carlos Buell's forces for the second day of the

engagement. The general was Ohio-born, probably the inspiration for thirteen-year-old Fred Bradley, nearly four decades after Shiloh, to compose his first poem, perhaps derivative, "The Drums of Buell." He imagined the arrival of the reinforcements:

Far away there sounds a cheeringl-And 'twas most beyond belief-As the news flashed down the line--'' Buell has come to Grant's relief!''

On April 19, when Farrington wrote to his mother from Camp Shiloh, he had heard of Eber and Cyntha's "Latest present," Almira Jane, born on March 19, who died less than a year later. He told Mrs. Farrington of sharing mess with Captain McCabe, two doctors, and another Lieutenant. Waiting on their table was "a yellow boy as waiter that I picked up by the way side who I call George Washington." This was a well established practice among Union soldiers. It has been estimated that as many as 200,000 blacks were cooks, waiters, wagoners, and laborers for Northern troops and about an equal number served as soldiers.

Eating, Si assured his homefolks, was good with "Ham and eggs, potatoes, mustard, soft bread, green apple sauce, cheese and butter with sugar and coffee." Their provisions were not always that high on the hog; in the same camp he once had nothing to eat for a full week except hard bread and salt pork.

Not content with the general business admonitions he had given to Eber two months before, Myron's letter of April 22 pointed out specific lacks he found in his brother's business practices. "Your slow note business I never did like and do not believe it is policy. I love the cash down system or if time at all have it verry limited." Moreover, the farm was poorly located: "I do believe if you had bought a place in a good healthy locality with good strong soil on some river or creek you would have been worth double what you now are or thousands of dollars more."

Practicing what he preached, he took the hard line with customers of The Telegraph House. They had to settle once a year, pay cash, or "give their notes at two percent per month." The privilege of notes at about twenty-four per cent annual Interest was for old and favored customers only. New ones paid every week in advance. Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune in California three years earlier, referred to "California rates of interest" with apparent awe.

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Myron had been trading that spring, swapping a six-horse team for two twenty-foot lots adjoining the hotel. There was more to sell including two wagons, a span of mules, two buggies, four sets of mule harnesses, and he did not recall what else. Summing up his collection techniques, he boasted, "So you see I have not lost my yankee yet."

At this time in the history of hotels in the American far west, an observer declared, "No one in the world teaches you your place so well as the American hotel-clerk." Perhaps he had met Myron.

There was an Inquiry about Farrington in Myron's letter, "He was not in the Ohio running regiment was he?" The question referred to some Ohio troops at Shiloh firing only a scared volley or two before disappearing from the field. The colonel of the Fifty-Third Ohio Regiment called to his men, " Fall back and save yourselves!" and the troops fled from the scene in confusion along with the Fifty-Seventh and Seventy-Seventh regiments.⁸

It was a relief for Farrington to get away from the site of the battle when he wrote from Corinth, Mississippi (April 25). "The air where we were encamping had become very Impure there

being so many dead bodies so slightly buried lying near.''

He was suffering from rheumatism and acute diarrhea which plagued him the best of his life. Diarrhea was often a catch-all term to cover what are now recognized as a multitude of diseases including typhoid fever. From near Corinth, within five miles of the Confederates' advanced lines, he wrote (June 26, 1862) to his mother that he was "convalescent but not able to stand much fatigue." He was thinking about coming home. "The time that I had pictured out in my mind to stay in the service has nearly expired."

As Josiah planned to leave the service, Eber revealed to his parents that he was thinking of joining up despite his family and thirty-four years. Minnie replied (August 17) that they all had read his letter "with mingled feelings of sadness and pride. We know how hard it is for you to leave your family and go with so many uncertainties staring in your face.''

One of the uncertainties would have been money since privates were paid about thirteen dollars a month. His age would have

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been no deterrent. Three out of every five Ohio men between eighteen and forty-five served in the Civil War military. ⁹

The youngest of the Bradley brothers, Henry M., enlisted on July 30, 1862 as a private in Company B, 10th Regiment of the Vermont Volunteers. He received a twenty-five dollar "bounty" plus a two-dollar "premium." Henry was twenty-one, half an inch short of five and a half feet tall, light complected, blue eyed, and had brown hair. Since 1857 he had been working in James G. French's clothing store, Montpelier. v

Company B was organized in Waterbury in early August, 1862 before the Regiment went into camp at Brattleboro, Vermont on the 15th and was mustered into service on September 1st with 1,016 officers and men. On September 6, in eighteen passenger cars, most men overloaded with personal impedimenta, books, stationery, brushes, patent medicines, etc., they traveled to New Haven, then by Steamboat "Continental" to New York. The troops moved by ship to Perth Amboy, N. J., and by rail to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., arriving on September 8th.

The next morning they marched to Camp Chase in Arlington, Virginia. The site was an old camp and the 10th did not like the stench about it. They managed to be reassigned to another and fresher location where they spent the winter of 1862-63.11

Perhaps the excitement of Henry's enlistment stirred Eber to think about getting into service. Hiram, too, was considered a likely candidate for the Army by the family when Myron wrote on September 23. For himself, he had many thoughts about the war including poor Union leadership, political upstarts leading troops into battle, Union defeats before Richmond, the tardy move against Stonewall Jackson in Maryland, and more. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation found him in agreement when it was issued that month, effective the next January 1st. Myron wrote, "As slavery is the base of the war let them be proclaimed free at once and have but the one thing in view and that to preserve the Union."

James Clark did not see any grand scheme in the conflict in his letter (October 10, 1862) from camp at Fairfax Court House, Virginia. He had been in service eighteen months, first with the

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25th Regiment of Ohio Infantry Volunteers, then transferred on Marchl7, 1862 to the 12th Ohio Battery. ° James wrote, "On our March we had ten hard battles." That included the second Battle of Bull Run where, Clark claimed, the Rebels charged the 12th Ohio Battery three times, captured a few men but none of the guns. " We had two men kild and 8 Wounded and 8 horses shot." Official records for the Battery show three died in battle during the war, seventeen by disease. ³

There was a glimpse of the old care-free James in a line addressed to Hiram, "If you are not Married yet you bad better put it off a while yet till I get back and you and I will have it both done up the same day and it will not cost so much." In fact, he did not marry until 1866 and remained married to the same woman

until his death in 1923 in his native Crawford County at eighty-three. ¹⁴

By October 12, Myron was ready to make the trip back east for his wedding to Clara Dixon. With a sharp eye for a profitable dollar, he was "thinking strong of crossing the plains for the purpose of bringing stock either mules or horses and maybe both" on his return trip with his spouse. California was prosperous. The mines were producing bountifully, the Nevada County and Humboldt mines seemed boundless. He could count 300 to 500 teams every day headed for the Washoe District mines. The State Fair had been a success, California could "beat the world" for the beauty, size, and flavor of fruit and, in a burst of early California Chamber-of-Commerce boosterism, "finally I think we can beat the world on exhibition of most any thing.''

Describing Henry as '' the flower of the flock," he wished him a safe return home "with glory on his brow, well and sound." Personally, Myron felt obligated not to enlist: "I should have gone long ago had it not been for some promises I made years since which I intend to fulfill."

Reading between the lines of his letter, it appears that Eber could not enlist because of a lame leg while Hiram was not interested in the Army with his marriage scheduled for January. Myron's lukewarm feelings about active service surfaced as he advised Hiram that he would find it "much more to his pleasure to

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marry and settle down than fighting his southern brethren.'' He also liked Charles' decision to "give himself entirely up to the ministry."

Down in Gallatin, Tennessee, Farrington was edgy when his discharge papers were sent to Whitehouse in error. He asked Eber (November 13,1862), "Please to attend to this amediately and oblidge." The Lieutenant must have been upset—he usually spelled better than that.

Although the sheep business was hitting bottom, one of Eber's customers, John Goes of Berea, a village near Cleveland, had not lost his faith in fleece and mutton. On Christmas Day 1862 he wrote that having sold his farm he was "going strait to Iowa on to the praries with a good lot of sheep." Mr. Goes had advice, "Now if you want to make money fast that is your plan."

Henry's military adventure was brief. After four months he became dangerously ill of typhoid fever in camp near Poolesville, Maryland. Brother John went to Maryland to care for him, writing to Eber (January 16,1863) from ' 'Head Quarters 10th Vt. Reg. Whites Ford 4V2 miles from Poolesville, Maryland." He went on, "The camp is in view of Sugar Loaf Mountain on one side and Ball Bluff on the other and Harpers Ferry in front about 18 miles distant."

Getting to the army camp to see Henry had been a rough experience. For three hours he had "walked about six miles in the dark, mud, through woods, through fields, over fences, &c. till I was almost drilled out.''

Lieutenant Si Farrington's military career was also over as he prepared for his marriage to Fanny Burnette, who was not quite tweety-two. Eber and family were invited in a note of January 17th:

Your company with Cynthas Mothers and the Children is solicited at Ins J.F.C. Burnettes near Swan Creek on Tuesday Jany. 20th, 1863, at 11 o'clock a.m.

At the wedding celebration, Eber could have been distracted by dark thoughts of his financial straits. Earlier that month (January 4), Ezbon Sanford itemized the status of that unpaid note, nearly five years old, with accumulated interest of $250 of which only half had been paid, not to mention the untouched

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principal amount. Ezbon's wife was ill, a hired girl cost him $1.25 a week, and he was unable to work being almost "three score years and ten."

Another wedding invitation came their way the next month, this one to Vermont for the long-planned Clara-Myron nuptials. From Myron's invitation (February 8, 1863), the date was only approximate, "I expect it will come off about the tenth of March.'' To Hiram, whose marriage was not two months old, he sent congratulations upon being “ as happy as a clam in the mud."

He had learned early to take a wife's needs and comfort into his considerations and given up the idea of returning to California across the plains. The journey would be too difficult for Clara so they would use the easier water route.

Another traveler, Horace Greeley, the famous New York newspaper editor, took the land route in 1859. For his return trip, he used the water route by way of the Isthmus for a fundamental reason, "those pestilent boils," the scourge of travelers crossing the plains.

On March 18th, Minnie reported on the marriage:

...which felicitous event occurred on the 5th of the present month. It passed off well-The parties most concerned were perfectly self-possessed as they are old enough to be!

She continued with more generousity about Clara Maria Dixon Bradley, "She looked magnif."

In fact, Myron married into a highly respected family. Clara's parents, Leonard and Eliza Bostwick Dixon, were to buy the Bostwick House hotel in Jericho about 1866, rename it the Dixon House, enlarge and develop it into a prestigious country inn with old-fashioned gardens, bowling alley, courts for croquet and quoit, stable of saddle horses, and a sumptuous bill of fare. 15

A guardian had to be appointed by the fall of 1862 for Timothy Meigs Bradley, no longer capable of taking care of his own affairs. Eli Judson wrote in March 1863 that he had arranged for the aged man to live at "a good boarding place this winter at $2.00 a week." Timothy's farm would be sold in a few days at about fifty dollars an acre. His debt to Eber would be paid after the sale. What Eli wanted to know was where the proceeds should be

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applied, i. e., to which of Eber's several obligations in Chittenden County should-the money be applied.

The returned soldier. Henry, wrote at the same time about eating his mother's cooking "like a pig" and weighing ten pounds more than when he enlisted the previous fall. John, who had brought him home, was to start attending a Commercial College in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., while Henry intended to return to his old job in Montpeller. Minnie, apparently at loose ends, would go with him.

At this point, the collection of family letters is sharply reduced. Perhaps Eber lost interest, maybe they have been lost. There is no correspondence, for example, about the final illness of Timothy Meigs who died, incompetent, in Brattleboro on April 4, 1864 at seventy-six years, fifteen days. Burial was in the Old Cemetery in Williston.

Probably the most famous prison camp for Southern officers was on Johnson's Island, located near Sandusky, Ohio, in Lake Erie. John Wesley Bradley, Company D, Hoffman's Battalion,

wrote from the Island on June 5:

The Prisoners have been working hard to get out. Last Sunday they dug a tunnell thru the fence some thirty ft and about 6 ft deep and one came and stuck his head out and the officer of the day saw him and drawed his revolver on him. But he went back to quick.

Wesley may have referred to an escape attempt by Lieutenant Charles Pierce, 7th Louisiana Regiment, who made three escape efforts, one about this time, without success, is

Escape attempts during the summer months were rare. Most tries came when Lake Erie was frozen solid as guards stuck close to their sentry boxes. Historians have questioned whether, in fact, any prisoner successfully escaped from the Prison. Most of the prisoners were Southern officers. On May 12, 1865, for instance, the rolls included two generals, 42 colonels, 60 majors, 627 captains, and 1919 lieutenants. Between 1861 and 1865, there were 206 Southerners buried on the Island.17 Cousin Wesley was tired of the assignment:

I shall come home in July about the 10th and I have wrote to Mary (his wife) and Cornelia (his sister) to get ready to go with me up to your house when I come and Cintha I want lots to eat when I come.. .It goes rather, tough to be away from home and can't get home when we want to.

Both Wesley and his brother Roscious (Rosh) J. Bradley served on Johnson's Island in the Hoff man Battalion v 'or its successor

(as of January 1864) the 128th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, organized at Columbus and the Island, discharged July 17,1865 ¹⁹

Charles had been devoting himself to church work, part-time or full-time, around Whitehouse when Martha died at twenty-five on July 27, 1864; six months before, their ten-month-old son, Charles Henry, had died.

In Troy, New York, Albert had changed jobs, becoming a molder's apprentice. "When I make a full week I earn from $18 to twenty, board $4.50." He took a cool view of the Conscription Act passed in 1863:

I am not afraid of the draft for I can go as a soldier or run away either & I had as lief do one as another it is no trouble to me.

He was far from alone in his distaste for the draft. To years earlier, when President Lincoln had threatened conscription if a military quota of 300,000 failed, Cleveland, Ohio reported "quite an army...of runaways" from the possibility of a draft and the

Burlington (Vt.) FreePress said that Canada-bound trains were crowded with escapees while numbers of eligibles made their way by foot or in wagons over the Canadian line.20

Albert's granddaughter, Pearle Bye Houchen, was told that he and nine other eligibles agreed, if any one of them was drafted, to collectively hire a substitute at a cost of thirty dollars to each of the ten. The $300, paid to the Government, could also have been for a military exemption on a specific quota call, a common practice which caused some to deride it as a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. In 1863-1864, there were four drafts. Of about 775,000 names called, over 200,000 hired substitutes and another 400,000 either paid $300 to be passed over or were physically unfit. 21

Poor business or not, Eber was still buying sheep. A supplier from Burlington sent him a telegram late in September, via the Vermont and Boston Telegraph Company, "Sheep Seventy five

Lambs fifty cents per head to Toledo. Boat leaves Tuesday.'' Probably on sheep business, he had been back to Vermont twice recently. Henry (October 2, 1864) deplored missing seeing him on both visits. The ex-soldier thought the war news was good. A

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month before Lincoln's re-election and six months before Lee's surrender he felt confident of victory:

We will soon have Rebellion under our feet...Abraham the Honest & faithful will be re-elected and will be the instrument in Gods hand for finishing the work which was begun through him.

(A few weeks after this letter, October 19, Vermonters were shocked by a band of Confederates, based in Canada, robbing banks in St. Albans, only twenty miles north of Burlington, of over one hundred thousand dollars. The money was never found; some reasonable people think it is still buried somewhere between St. Albans and the border.)

Much as he wanted to visit Ohio and California, Henry had to work while he was young, he felt,' 'for I do not dispair of making a mark in the world yet though I do not toil at it." Then a statement with several emphatic underlinings, "and I have some of the independence of the Sally Cooley side of the house in my veins.''

Their third son was born to Eber and Cyntha in 1864-Almyra, their first daughter, had lived only a few months in 1862. Henry Sherman Bradley, born on December 16th, was clearly named after his Uncle Henry and Ohio's own General William Tecumseh Sherman who was completing his triumphant 300-mile March to the Sea, November 15-December 21, 1864, setting the stage for the end of the war at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

When the end of me long war came, Burlington (like elsewhere in the North) celebrated wildly according to the local newspapers. Bells were rung, great bonfires Ignited, steam whistles let loose, a cannon or two fired off, and spontaneous parades took off through the city.

(That only some family letters of this period are available is emphasized by the absence of any correspondence mentioning the President's death on April 15, 1865.)

For all of his hopes and ambitions, Henry did not live to accomplish them. At twenty-four, he died in Williston on November 12, 1865. His 1864 application for a pension because of rheumatism incurred in service had been rejected. Ironically, two penciled notes were made on his pension application in Washington, sixteen years after his death:

Mr. Whelpley-Don't you think this claimant should having a hearing? Dent.

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And the reply from Mr. Whelpley:

I would not reopen unless by request of claimant. CSW June 2,81.

Eli Judson's sister, Phoebe, seventy-nine, died on March 30, 1865. Her husband, John L. Corning, lived only into the next year. They had been close friends of Timothy Meigs as shown by the many entries about them in his journal.

By the years 1865 and 1866, both Willie and Albert were helping on the Eber Bradley farm. His work ethic was simple, as his son Albert described it, "Old enough to go to school, old enough and big enough to help work."

The stove business was humming when Albert and Mary, in Troy, heard from his father (March 31, 1867). He had sold five the previous week and "I sell but few except reservior stoves and Rathbone charges me but 22 dollars for ex(tended)top and ' fireside and the stove suits everyone that uses it."

As his letters show, Eli bad been selling stoves for years, the market having opened up about 1820-1830 when cookstoves began replacing fireplaces for cooking. Peddlers toured the northern states, often with cast iron stoves loaded on sturdy wagons, stopping frequently to set up the stoves for demonstration.

Sally reminded her husband, in his March 31st letter, to tell Albert and Mary about the revival at Underbill. "Some 90 converts, among them the Eastman boys Albert etc almost all the Meade boys in Underbill, Robert Jackson and wife, several other Jacksons, all the Palmers etc. etc. I was at 1 meeting evening. It was glorious."22

Josiah Farrington's second wife, Frances (Fannie) Burnette Farrington, whom he had married after leaving the Army in 1863, died in May 1866. She was twenty-five. In April of the next year he married Fannie's younger sister, Sarah Louise Burnette, who was known by her middle name. In a year or two they moved in a covered wagon to Norborne, Missouri. With him and Louise were a daughter and son by his first wife (Addie and Ambrose), two of Fannie's children (Marcella and Electa), and their own new-born Justine. Josiah and Louise had a number of children in Missouri including Myra, Marcella, Francis, Ada, and John Burnette Farringdon.