Helen Bradley was born on 12 June 1886 in Steubinville, Ohio. She died on 12 November 1892 at the age of 6 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Died of diphtheria. Parents: Dan Freeman Bradley and Lillian Josephine Jaques.


Helen Gibson Bradley was born on 26 August 1932. Parents: Robert Gamble Bradley and Mabel Gibson.


Helen L. Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Richard Crane Bradley and Dorothy Holden.

Spouse: Hugo Teave. Helen L. Bradley and Hugo Teave were married. Children were: Mahani Teave, Teamai Teave.


Howard Dwight Bradley was born on 10 June 1882 in Bangkok, Siam. Name changed in 1889 to Dwight Blachly Bradley. Name and birthdate from Dan Beach Bradley's bible. Parents: Dwight Blachly Bradley and Annie E. Davis.


Irene Bell Bradley was born on 19 May 1860 in Bangkok, Siam. She died on 14 January 1943 at the age of 82 in Bangkok, Siam. Unmarried. Irene kept every letter written to her by her sister Dellie, but never responded once. Parents: Dan Beach Bradley D.D. and Sarah Blachly.


Isaac Bradley was born on 19 January 1817. Parents: Hon. Dan Bradley and Nancy Rose.


Jabez Bradley was born on 13 October 1733. He died in 1793 at the age of 60. Died suddenly by the rupture of a blood vessel. He lived in Hamden, Connecticut. Parents: Dea. Daniel Bradley and Abigail Punchard.

Spouse: Esther Beach. Esther Beach and Jabez Bradley were married in 1754. Children were: Job Bradley, Mehitable Bradley, Hannah Bradley, Sarah Bradley, Esther Bradley, Jabez Bradley, Hon. Dan Bradley, Lois Bradley, Sue Bradley.


Jabez Bradley was born on 16 August 1765. He died on 20 February 1817 at the age of 51. Parents: Jabez Bradley and Esther Beach.


Jacob David Bradley was born on 22 February 2001. Parents: Richard Kari Bradley and Gabrielle Malena.


James Richard Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Dr. William Lee Bradley and Paula Ann Elliot.


James Watrous Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Joseph Crane Bradley and Katharine Tryon.


Job Bradley was born on 24 August 1755. He died on 22 June 1767 at the age of 11. Died by drowning. Parents: Jabez Bradley and Esther Beach.


Joseph Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Joseph Crane Bradley and Josephine Trumbauer.


Joseph Crane Bradley was born (date unknown). "Joe is still alive but in failing health. He had some sort of stroke in mid-life that definitely changed his life." [Markus Bradley letter, 2002] Parents: Harold Cornelius Bradley and Mary Josephine Crane.

Spouse: Josephine Trumbauer. Josephine Trumbauer and Joseph Crane Bradley were married. Children were: Joseph Bradley.

Spouse: Katharine Tryon. Katharine Tryon and Joseph Crane Bradley were married. Children were: James Watrous Bradley, Margaret Bradley.


Josephine Crane Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Richard Crane Bradley and Dorothy Holden.

Spouse: Laurence S. Lopez. Josephine Crane Bradley and Laurence S. Lopez were married. Children were: Angelique M. Lopez, Alejandro U. Lopez, Genevieve A. Lopez, Amber E. Lopez, Roman C. Lopez.


Josephine McLane (Wendy) Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: David John Bradley and Elizabeth Bancroft McLane.

Spouse: Robert Morgan. Josephine McLane (Wendy) Bradley and Robert Morgan were married.


Kathy Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Stephen Joseph Bradley and Anne Hurlburt.


Kim McLane Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: David John Bradley and Elizabeth Bancroft McLane.


Lois Bradley was born on 12 February 1769. She died on 18 May 1821 at the age of 52. Parents: Jabez Bradley and Esther Beach.


Lynn Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Stephen Joseph Bradley and Anne Hurlburt.

Spouse: Michael Grace. Lynn Bradley and Michael Grace were married. Children were: Lisa Grace, Eben Grace, Michael Grace Jr..

Spouse: Aldo Carl Leopold. Lynn Bradley and Aldo Carl Leopold were married.


Maija Matilda Bradley was born on 2 August 1998. Parents: Markus Bradley and Laura White.


Margaret Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Joseph Crane Bradley and Katharine Tryon.

Spouse: Mark Gesner Timmerman. Margaret Bradley and Mark Gesner Timmerman were married on 13 June 1981. Children were: Katharine Timmerman, Grace Timmerman.


Margaret Day Bradley was born on 6 September 1918 in Berkeley, California. Parents: Dwight Jaques Bradley and Kathryn Lee Culver.

Spouse: Morris Fairchild Arnold. Margaret Day Bradley and Morris Fairchild Arnold were married. Children were: William Morris Arnold, Jaquiline Fairchild Arnold.


Mark William Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: William Crane Bradley and Alice Louise Babcock.


Markus Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: David McLane (Darby) Bradley and Liisa Muukari.

Spouse: Laura White. Laura White and Markus Bradley were married. Children were: Maija Matilda Bradley, Charlie Stephenson Bradley.


Mary Adelle Bradley22 was born on 30 November 1854 in Bangkok, Siam. She died on 5 May 1926 at the age of 71 in Tacoma Park, Maryland. From Harold Bradley's introduction to Ruth Bradley's "Dellie" :
"Dellie was my aunt, a frail woman with an iron will who gave birth to, and reared her sons in pioneer Colorado. Her life was as fascinating as fiction and as remarkable as only the truth can be. Her story might have been called "A Woman in Four Worlds" or "Through Four Periods of Life." There is a lovely belief among some Buddhists in parts of Asia that death will not come to a person until his special lotus opens. The deceased will then sit on his flower as Buddha is often portrayed. Surely no lotus ever waited during a more unusual life than my aunt's. Mary Adelle Bradley's world began in Bangkok, Siam, where she was born in 1854. Her missionary family was not wealthy, but lack of comforts was unknown., and Siamese servants did all the housework. Contacts were only with the foreign community and the Royal Siamese families. The intellectual atmosphere was not too changed when my aunt was sent to Oberlin College in 1875. Aunt Dellie's second world began in 1877 when she married her cousin, Andrew Trew Blachly, after a few weeks' acquaintance. For the next sixteen years, frequent moves, the birth of eight boys, recurring ill health, and harsh living conditions--with near starvation at times were made bearable because of her utter devotion to, and faith in her husband and her belief that God made no mistakes in what he inflicted on His Children. That period ended in 1893. Who can decide whether that era or the one to follow and which lasted until 1915 revealed more strongly the character of this extraordinary woman? Was it the legacy of indomnitability and sense of duty learned at home, or was it supreme mother love that enabled her to keep her family together and ultimately to send each boy off to earn his own college education? Those things accomplished, Aunt Dellie entered the briefest of her worlds-nine years of what she considered undeserved comfort and luxury. In our present age of character softening influences, changing moral values, of Aid to Dependent Children and Public Assistance, it would seem worthwhile to read of a woman who lived by principles which should be as valid now as when Aunt Dellie applied them. As a relative said, "If Dellie's story is not written so that those of us who knew of such women may read it, the next generation will never believe its truth but consider it pure imagination." Because Bradleys have a family tradition of saving every piece of correspondence, it would be hard to conceive of an individual's life more fully documented and one more thoroughly discussed among relatives than that of Mary Adelle Bradley Blachly. Beginning at the time of her marriage and continuing for more than forty years, most letters referred to her as "poor Dellie" and that is what Lou would have titled his book. But my wife has found a radiance and a richness in Aunt Dellie's life which will not permit her to use poor. I agree that she was always simply DELLIE."

The 1910 federal census of Delta, Co lists Sarah B. Cheek, aged 60 as a member of Dellie's household.
Parents: Dan Beach Bradley D.D. and Sarah Blachly.

Spouse: Andrew Trew Blachly. Mary Adelle Bradley and Andrew Trew Blachly were married on 5 September 1877 in Kansas City, Missouri. Children were: Dr. Arthur Trew Blachly, Frederick Frank Blachly, Clarence Dan Blachly, Howard Dwight Blachly, William Harold Blachly, Ralph Reamer Blachly, Louis Bradley Blachly, Edward Hugh Blachly.


Mary Cornelia Bradley was born on 2 May 1909 in Chicago, Illinois. She died in 1916 at the age of 7 in Chicago, Illinois. Parents: Harold Cornelius Bradley and Mary Josephine Crane.


Mehitable Bradley was born on 3 March 1757. She died after 1834 at the age of 77. Parents: Jabez Bradley and Esther Beach.


Melanie Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: William Crane Bradley and Alice Louise Babcock.


Menaka Sondhi Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Daniel Charles Bradley and Radhika Sondhi.


Merideth Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: William Crane Bradley and Mary Virginia Biart.


Mrs. William Bradley died in 1634.

Spouse: Sir William Bradley. Children were: William Bradley.


Nancy Bradley was born on 21 July 1791 in Cheshire. Parents: Hon. Dan Bradley and Eunice Beach.


Paul William Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Dr. William Lee Bradley and Paula Ann Elliot.


Richard Crane Bradley was born (date unknown). See note for Richard's Grandfather, Cornelius Bradley. Parents: Harold Cornelius Bradley and Mary Josephine Crane.

Spouse: Dorothy Holden. Dorothy Holden and Richard Crane Bradley were married. Children were: Richard Crane Bradley Jr., Helen L. Bradley, Josephine Crane Bradley, David H. Bradley.


Richard Crane Bradley Jr. was born (date unknown). Parents: Richard Crane Bradley and Dorothy Holden.


Richard Kari Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: David McLane (Darby) Bradley and Liisa Muukari.

Spouse: Gabrielle Malena. Gabrielle Malena and Richard Kari Bradley were married. Resided Helena, Montana, 2002. Children were: Simon Louis Bradley, Jacob David Bradley.


Robert Gamble Bradley was born on 19 June 1892 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He died in 1972 at the age of 80. Parents: Dan Freeman Bradley and Lillian Josephine Jaques.

Spouse: Mabel Gibson. Children were: Helen Gibson Bradley, Rev. William Bradley.


Sarah Bradley was born on 29 November 1760. She died in 1802 at the age of 42. She was the mother of Dan and Mabel Peck and other children. Parents: Jabez Bradley and Esther Beach.


Sarah Adorna Bradley was born on 8 April 1850 in Singapore. She died on 24 March 1933 at the age of 82 in Berkeley, California. Parents: Dan Beach Bradley D.D. and Sarah Blachly.

Spouse: Dr. Marion Alphonso Cheek. Sarah Adorna Bradley and Dr. Marion Alphonso Cheek were married on 30 November 1870 in Bangkok, Siam. Children were: Adolph Cheek, Maude Cheek, Herbert Cheek, Sarah Wandee Cheek, Grace Cheek.


Simon Louis Bradley was born on 31 August 1997. Parents: Richard Kari Bradley and Gabrielle Malena.


Sophia Royce Bradley was born on 8 October 1839 in Bangkok, Siam. She died on 5 July 1923 at the age of 83. Sophia had a granddaughter, Christina, who married W. Harding Kneedler and lived in Davidson, NC (1962). Christina's mother was one of Sophia's daughters.

Sophia Bradley McGilvary and Sarah Blachly Bradley: Notes Towards a Family Biography
Herb Swanson

Introduction

One of the joys of historical research is how one thing leads to another, so that slowly over the course of days and weeks of research one begins to understand things that at first did not make sense. During the summer of 2003, I spent a delightful seven weeks (thanks to a small grant from the Luce Foundation), partly in visiting family, but primarily ensconced in the libraries of Berea College and Yale University tracking down data for a dozen different research topics. In particular, I was following up leads on the life of Sarah Blachly Bradley (1817-1893), a minor character in the history of Protestant missions in Siam who turns out to have been a quite remarkable individual. She is known in the missionary records, generally, as "the second Mrs. Bradley," the second wife, that is, of Dr. Dan Beach Bradley, the single-most Protestant missionary to serve in Siam during the nineteenth century. How I became interested in Sarah Bradley and what I have learned about her is the subject of this article; I ran out of research time in the States before I ran out of questions, and another summer in the United States may well turn up further data. However, before going on with that research, I would like to use this opportunity to "get down" what I know so far and share that knowledge with the readers of HeRB. As usual, citations are included in the text and the details for each source can be found in the list of sources at the end of the article.

Sophia & Sarah

My research on Sarah Bradley actually began with her stepdaughter, Sophia Bradley McGilvary (1839-1923), one of the key figures in the early history of the Laos Mission. I hope to "get going" again on my long-delayed history of northern Thai Christianity, and when I do it will be important to have on hand as much information as possible on the women members of the Laos Mission. Those women, especially the married women, pose a major challenge to the historian because there is so little readily available and obviously relevant data about them. Sophia McGilvary was the first woman missionary to serve in northern Siam; the daughter of missionary parents, she became a Presbyterian missionary in 1860 when she married Daniel McGilvary in Bangkok. From that date until her death sixty-two years later, Sophia McGilvary carried out a remarkable missionary career filled with a series of notable achievements. She initiated informal women's education in northern Siam. She played an important early role in introducing Western homemaking technologies and women's fashions into that same region. She translated the first Christian Scriptures, the Gospel of Matthew, into northern Thai. She played a part in the conversion of the first northern Thai converts. She and her husband also raised five children, three of whom eventually became members of the Laos Mission. Sophia McGilvary is particularly credited with beginning a small class for girls on her veranda at some point in the mid-1870s, which by 1879 had been transformed into the Chiang Mai Girls' School, today's Dara Academy.

Beyond her particular contributions, moreover, Sophia is important for another reason. When she became a Presbyterian missionary in 1861, the Presbyterian Church was still divided into two separate denominations usually known as the Old School and New School churches. These two factions parted ways in a bitter split that took place in 1837, and each claimed that it was the "real" Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA). As their names suggest, the Old School was the more conservative, traditionally Calvinistic of the two sides. Old School Presbyterians were suspicious of theological innovation and, to a degree, of inter-denominational cooperation. The New School tended, on the other hand, to be more open to theological change and its members were quite willing to cooperate ecumenically with other denominations, especially New England Congregationalism. The Old School generally looked on emotional forms of revivalism with disfavor, while the New School was associated with the more enthusiastic "new measures" revivalism. The split was an acrimonious one, involving apparently underhanded political gamesmanship as well as theological dissension. Over the course of the years, however, the denominational crises of the 1830s grew increasingly less significant, and in 1869 the two separate churches reunited to form one PCUSA again.

The Siam Mission, which Sophia McGilvary joined in 1861, was an Old School mission, and the Laos Mission that she and her husband Daniel founded in 1867 was also, if only briefly, an Old School mission. Daniel McGilvary's voluminous writings reveal clearly that he was an Old School Presbyterian, as was the other senior male leader of the mission in its early years, the Rev. Jonathan Wilson. The presumption might be then that Old School theology dominated the mission since the two key leaders, Wilson and McGilvary, adhered to it. But, was that the case? Sophia, as one of the two senior women of the mission, complicates giving a clear answer to this question. Before the American Civil War, her father, Dan Beach Bradley, associated himself with Charles G. Finney, the premier revivalistic and theological innovator o f his day. Theological conservatives regarded Finney with deep mistrust, and Bradley had been forced to leave his original mission, the Siam Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), because of his "Finneyite" proclivities. Bradley's theological views, that is to say, if anything went beyond even those of the New School. Did her father's views influence Sophia? Did she consciously, or even unconsciously, bring a different theological perspective to her work as a missionary? Given Sophia's role in the Laos Mission, especially in its pioneer era, these questions are potentially important for our understanding of the larger theological orientation of the mission itself.

The problem is that it is very difficult to find answers to these questions concerning Sophia's theological orientation directly from the historical record of the Laos Mission itself. While both her father and husband have left us with a copious historical record, including Bradley's famous diaries and McGilvary's equally well-known autobiography, nothing has come down to us from Sophia but a paltry few letters. She did not write articles or correspond with the Board. She did, evidently, write family letters, but few of those are available, and we have to assume that most of the rest are lost forever. A full telling of Sophia's tale, in light of this dearth of data, thus requires a search for further information about Sophia's life before she became a missionary. It was that search that led me to Sarah Blachly Bradley.

I was looking, in particular, for was information about Sophia Bradley's childhood and her educational background that might provide some clues as to her later role in the Laos Mission. How was she raised? What was she taught about the Christian faith as a child and teenager? Where did she go to school? My search for answers to these questions almost immediately led me to discover Sophia's stepmother, Sarah Blachly Bradley. It turns out that Sophia's mother, Emilie Royce Bradley (1811-1845), died when Sophia was only five, and Sophia was largely raised by her stepmother, Sarah.

Donald Lord's biography of Sophia's father, Dan Beach Bradley provides one important entry point into Sophia's life. As described by Lord, Sophia Bradley's education can be divided into four distinct phases. During the first phase, she was raised and educated by her mother, Emelie Royce Bradley, who according to the biographical notes of Paul Eakin was educated at the Clinton Female Seminary in Clinton New York. Three of her aunts ran the school, and at age 15 she became an assistant teacher, a position she held until she was 19, when she moved to Manlius, New York, to become the "preceptress" of a female seminary. That is to say that Emelie Bradley was herself an unusually well-educated woman for her day and age and had at least five years teaching experience before she began to home school Sophia, her second daughter. Lord, who has also written a brief article about Emelie, obviously has a very high regard for her, and she surely was a loving, competent mother for Sophia and her siblings. Emilie Bradley died, however, on 8 August 1845, when Sophia was still five years old. At that point her life and education entered its second phase, during which her father tutored her himself, this phase lasting until February 1847, when Bradley and his three living children arrived in Oberlin, Ohio. He left the children there with friends to attend school while he traveled to various places in the United States, and it was at this point that Sophia, age 7, started in the third phase of her young life. Her stay at Oberlin was the only time in her life that she received her education in a regular classroom situation. In July 1848, however, Sophia's older sister, Emilie, died, and her father rushed back to Oberlin, at which time he learned of a woman, Sarah Blachly of Dane, Wisconsin, who wanted to marry a missionary. After a courtship conducted by mail and a hasty arduous trip to the backwoods of northern Wisconsin, Bradley married Sarah in Dane in November 1848. From that point onwards, Sarah raised Sophia and her brother Cornelius; Sophia was just nine years old when she entered this final phase of her life and education before her marriage to McGilvary. Sarah had five children of her own with Bradley, and Lord writes that she "…prepared all seven for advanced study in a day when college admission called for a knowledge of Latin and Greek. Not handicapped by the limitations of her residence in Thailand, she also gave her children a foundation in Hebrew as well." (Page 131).

It is clear from Lord's sparse data on Sophia that Sarah Blachly Bradley was a highly important person so far as Sophia's educational and religious training are concerned. It is also evident, that Lord has as high a regard for Sarah Blachly as he had for Emelie Royce. He writes, "Sarah Blachly Bradley was a fiery woman who accepted her role in life much as Bradley had his. For twenty years after her husband's death, she managed the press and continued his missionary work. Eventually, Sarah's status in Thailand nearly equaled Bradley's." (Lord, Mo Bradley, 206). What impact did this fiery, competent, and socially influential woman have on Sophia? What theological background and orientation did Sarah bring to Sophia's education?

Trying to find answers to these questions confronts the researcher with a situation even more frustrating than Sophia's. If we are to understand how Sarah Blachly Bradley raised Sophia, we have to study Sarah's own personal history before her sudden marriage to Bradley. But where Sophia was born in the very midst of Thai missionary history, as it were, and some information about her is accessible through the ordinary archival and secondary sources of the field, Sarah Bradley was born, raised, and educated far beyond the pale of Thailand missionary records. In the records of the Laos Mission, in particular, she is a shadowy figure known only as "Dearest Mother" in a few letters written by Daniel or Sophia McGilvary to her. Lord's biography of Bradley provides very little background information about her other than she graduated from the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) and was from Dane, Wisconsin (Lord, Mo Bradley, 130). Bertha McFarland provides a somewhat fuller description of Sarah Bradley without resolving any of the questions about her background. McFarland states that she was a graduate of Oberlin College and a woman of "unusual intellectual attainment," who was clever and competent. McFarland also relates in a very long end note how Sarah provided her step-children and children with a very intense education that involved both a great deal of Bible memorization and knowledge of the larger world. (McFarland, McFarland of Siam, 28, 290).

Asides from impressions and character sketches, Lord and McFarland do not give us with much to go on in terms of actual information. Sarah Blachly went to Oberlin College. She was from Dane, Wisconsin. These two bits of information, however, turned out to be crucial leads in a happy chase.

The Chase Begins in Berea

Logically, I should have investigated Sarah's connection with Dane, Wisconsin, first as it appeared (incorrectly) that she was originally from Dane. I began my research, however, at the Berea College library, which not surprisingly had a great deal more on Oberlin than on Dane.

One item that quickly came to hand was an entry in Oberlin College's Seventy-Fifth Anniversary General Catalogue, which reads:

Blachly, Sarah (Mrs. D. B. Bradley); enr. '41-'45 coll.; fr. Wethersfield, O.; d. Bangkok, Siam, Aug., 16, '93; A.B., Oberlin, '45. (p. 89).

The first thing notable about this entry is that Sarah is listed as being not from Wisconsin, but from a place called "Wethersfield" in Ohio. Obviously, things were going to be more complicated than I had expected, although if I had remembered that there was no such place as "Wisconsin" when Sarah was born in 1817, I would have anticipated a more complicated scenario. Dane, Wisconsin, did not even come into official being until only a few months before she was married! As it turns out, this entry misspells "Wethersfield." The correct spelling is Weathersfield, a typographical error that later wasted some of my time in the a frustrating search for a place that never existed.

The second significant piece of information contained in this entry is the fact that Sarah Blachly received her B.A. degree from Oberlin College in 1845. Both McFarland and Lord mention that Sarah "graduated" from Oberlin, but it was not clear that this meant that she actually received a bachelor's degree, the same as any male student. One could all but count on one hand or two the number of women in the United States in the 1840s who graduated from a regularly established college rather than a "female seminary." Oberlin was virtually unique in the fact that it admitted both women and African Americans to its regular degree program. The word "remarkable" constantly comes to mind in the unfolding story of Sarah Blachly, with cause. She brought to the Bradley family an exceptional educational attainment that, according to McFarland above, she passed on to her stepchildren as well as her own. That is to say, Sophia Bradley McGilvary was tutored, from the age of nine, by one of the most well educated American women of her age. Stated from the perspective of the history of the Laos Mission, Sophia McGilvary brought to the mission an educational background that equaled her husband's, or nearly so.

A third important fact contained in this entry is the dates she attended Oberlin, that is in the early 1840s. Hutchins Library at Berea provided several helpful secondary sources on the history of Oberlin College and the life of Charles G. Finney, which showed that Oberlin, both the college and the town, was an intensely religious place during the 1840s. Finney was the president of a college that had a sincerely evangelical faculty and deeply committed student body; the college in those days experienced frequent spells of revivalistic renewal. Sarah must have studied under Finney as well as other well-known Finneyite supporters on the Oberlin faculty, and it is evident that Sarah participated in central currents of Finneyite revivalism. It is clear, especially from McFarland, that she brought that same intensity of religious commitment to her stepdaughter's education and upbringing. That is to say, that Sophia Bradley's stepmother, Sarah, shared the same general theological and revivalistic orientation as Sophia's father. Whatever she herself believed, she was raised in a decidedly New School environment quite different from the majority of her future Presbyterian missionary colleagues.

Although I looked through several other sources on Oberlin while at Berea, I found nothing further relevant to Sarah Blachly, except for the following brief notice of her marriage to Bradley in the Oberlin Evangelist for 22 November 1848 (v. 10, No. 22). That notice contains the added information that she was the daughter of Miller Blachly and states, "Mrs. Bradley is one of the few ladies of our country who have received the first Degree in the Arts from a literary institution. She is a lady of excellent spirit and talents, and is doubtless the first foreign missionary from our new State." (p. 175) This notice helps to confirm the image of Sarah Blachly as an unusual, competent individual. It also proved very helpful in my further research to know her father's name.

Continuing the Chase in New Haven

It was this picture and few snippets of information that I took with me from Berea to New Haven and the several libraries of Yale University. Having accessed the Yale University online catalog from Berea, I knew that Yale had (unexpectedly) several histories of Dane County, Wisconsin; and virtually the first thing I did at Yale was to put in a request for several of those histories. Instead of being on the shelf of one library or another, those seldom used nineteenth-century tomes were being held captive in a mysterious facility known by the ominous acronym of "LSF" (Long Storage Facility), Yale's internment camp for old books that are n ot rare, just old. Twenty-four hours later, I opened the dusty, magic pages of the History of Dane County, Wisconsin, warmed up my trusty iBook, and discovered the following facts. The town of Dane was first settled in 1845. Early settlers, according to page 885, included three Blachly families, those of Miller, Eban, and Bell Blachly. The next page, 886, adds, "The first school was held in the Luse neighborhood in 1847, Miss Sarah Blachly being the teacher." Given her educational background and the fact that virtually the only profession open to single women in the 1840s was teaching, it was not at all surprising to learn that Sarah was a pioneer teacher. I now had some other family names, although it was not clear at that point whether Eban and Bell were Sarah's uncles or brothers (they were her brothers). That same page, 886, also states, "Rev. Mr. Blachly was Pastor of the first Congregational Church, organized in 1848." Which Blachly "Rev. Mr. Blachly" is, unfortunately, not stated, but the evident family connection to Congregationalism only serves to reinforce the sense that Sophia's heritage through her stepmother was definitely not Old School Presbyterian.

Another brittle old tome entitled, Madison, Dane County and Surrounding Towns; Being a History and Guide, provides still further information. The Blachly Family, it reports, immigrated to Dane in the summer of 1846 and was part of what was locally called "the Ohio settlement," meaning that they came with a number of other families from Ohio (pages 468-469). Of the Ohio settlement the book notes,

This was a valuable acquisition to the town, and it is seldom that a settlement is made up of men and women as well qualified for pioneer life; all, men of a high moral character, and in possession of a liberal education. They wielded a powerful influence in shaping the moral sentiment of the community. (Page 469).

Two of the prominent members of the Ohio settlement in Dane were Dr. Eben Blachly and his brother, Bell. The next paragraph on page 469 relates that "In this settlement the first school district was organized, and the first school house in the town was built in 1847; Miss Sarah Blachly teaching the first term." We also learn on that same page that her marriage to Bradley was the first marriage in the community.

Things were falling into place. For one thing, the reference to Wethersfield, Ohio, in that brief Oberlin College entry about Sophia, mentioned above, began to make sense. Wisconsin was still on the fringes of the western frontier in the 1840s. The Blachlys had to have come from somewhere else, and where they came from was Ohio. They appear to have migrated to Wisconsin as part of an organized effort involving several families. Clearly, some amount of planning and preparation must have gone into this move by a group of people who were anything but the oppressed refugees of our own age. This is not to belittle in any sense the difficulties involved in moving from Ohio to Wisconsin; it was no small matter to pick up and move over 800 kilometers on the all but impassable forest tracks of the North American frontier to the backwoods of frigid Wisconsin. How long did it take them? What conditions did they meet with? Had anyone gone ahead to make preparations? How did they survive that first long winter of 1846? What motivated them to move to Wisconsin in the first place? Finally, it is evident that Sarah came from a family and a community that valued education.

While I was accumulating this information on the Blachlys from their connection to Dane, Wisconsin, I was also getting Weathersfield sorted out from Wethersfield. The problem was that Wethersfield was apparently an alternative spelling for Weathersfield so my research in various databases got "hits" on "Wethersfield, Ohio," but those hits never led anyplace. It took a helpful reference librarian and the use of a different database to break the logjam. Once broken, I could begin to gather in the Ohio strand of this story, which had been dangling since Berea.

The Yale University online catalog lists among the university's holdings a microfilm copy of the two volume History of Trumbull and Mahoning Counties. Volume two, beyond all expectation, provided a veritable mother lode of information on the Blachlys. Page 223 contains the following paragraph, which is worth quoting in full:

Aaron Bell was an early settler [in Weathersfield], but sold out to Miller Blachly. Miller Blachly settled about one mile from Niles, a little northeast of the town. He had three sons, Eben, Miller, and Bell; and three daughters, Phebe (Dunlap), Eleanor, who remained single, and Sarah (Bradley). Eben became a doctor and practiced several years in Niles and Warren. He married Minerva, only daughter of Dr. John Seely. Miller, Jr., was also a physician and practiced here. Bell married and settled in Weathersfield. All moved to Wisconsin. Miller Blachly was a very good man, but positive, and even obstinate in adhering to his opinions. He was a devoted Presbyterian and a strong temperance advocate. In early days the roads in his neighborhood were very bad, and sometimes teams stuck in the mud and could not move their loads. Mr. Blachly was usually ready to lend his team to assist over the difficult places; but when a man who was hauling a load of grain to a neighboring distillery asked for such assistance, he obtained only a very stern refusal.

Historians live for paragraphs like this one! Eben and Bell Blachly were Sarah's brothers, not uncles. She had five siblings including a brother named Miller, so her father was Miller Sr. Two of her brothers were doctors, which in Niles, Ohio, in the 1840s meant that they were members of the local social elite and two of the best-educated individuals in their community. Eben married a doctor's daughter as well, doubly confirming his local status. We already had the impression of a well-educated family, but now we also see the Blachlys as a locally prominent family.

This paragraph even provides a hint of an answer to the question of why they moved to Wisconsin. It tells us that the Blachlys were early settlers in Weathersfield Township, although we do not know yet when they moved there. Since we know from this same source that settlement in the area of the township began in 1801 and the township was formally established in 1807, it seems likely that the Blachlys had moved to Ohio before 1817, when Sarah was born. The matter is not "nailed down," but Sarah was probably born in Weathersfield, Ohio; at the very least, she surely lived there from the time she was a small child. The move to Wisconsin, in any event, was not the first time this family had picked up and moved westward to the fringes of the frontier. In fact, it appears that they came from Pennsylvania. Page 222 states of the early nineteenth-century residents of Weathersfield, "The settlers of this township nearly all came from Pennsylvania, and many of them, after several years' residence here, moved further West…" The fact that Miller Blachly, Sr. was a Presbyterian strongly supports the supposition that the Blachly family actually came from Pennsylvania, the heartland of American Presbyterianism. If the family did move to

Ohio from Pennsylvania about 1810, as our evidence suggests, then it was just a generation later that it picked up and moved on to Wisconsin. Their move, furthermore, was typical of the Pennsylvanians who moved to Ohio. Without having any details, we can at least surmise that the Blachlys were one of "those" families that felt the westward tug, which kept Americans moving westward for several generations.

This paragraph also gives us the important information that Sarah's father, Miller Blachly, was a Presbyterian and tells us a rather unflattering little story about him, which provides us with an insight not only into the father but also the piety of the family. Page 234 of this history adds that the Blachly family participated in the founding of the Weathersfield Presbyterian Church in 1839 and that, "Eben Blachly and Miller Blachly, Jr., were appointed to the office of ruling elders, and at the same time were ordained and installed." Reading on that same page, we learn that the Presbytery of New Lisbon founded the church.

Given what we had known previously about Sarah Blachly, it comes as a surprise that she was a Presbyterian, although her family's strong commitment to education fits with a Presbyterian background. The Presbyterians played a major role in spreading formal education across the frontier and were invariably found among the local social elite in rural and frontier American communities. What is not clear at this point is whether the Weathersfield Church was an Old School or New School congregation. The fact is an important one; if the church was founded as a New School congregation, it would further strengthen our sense that Sarah came from a New School background and brought that theology and piety to raising Sophia. If, on the other hand, it was Old School church, we are suddenly confronted with a more complex scenario in which Sarah came from a mixed theological background that included both traditional Old School and innovative Finneyite elements.

With the data at hand as described above, we can construct at least the beginnings of a time line for Sarah Blachly Bradley's life before she moved to Bangkok.

Time Line for Sarah Blachly Bradley
1801 the first settler arrived in what became Weathersfield Township, Ohio.
1809 Weathersfield Township established. The Miller Blachly Family is reported to have been "early settlers" in the township.
1817 Sarah Blachly born.
ca. 1830 a temperance society was formed at Weathersfield with Miller Blachly listed as one of the two key leaders of the movement.
1839 Presbytery of New Lisbon established the Weathersfield Church (today's Niles Presbyterian Church). Members included Miller Blachly and his wife Phebe, Eben B., Anna B., Miller B., Jr. and his wife Mary Parents: Dan Beach Bradley D.D. and Emelie Royce.

Spouse: Rev. Dan McGilvary. Sophia Royce Bradley and Rev. Dan McGilvary were married on 6 December 1860. Children were: Catherine Emilie McGilvary, Evander Bradley McGilvary, Cornelia Harriet Petit McGilvary, Margaret Alexandra McGilvary, Norwood Aspinwall Hodge McGilvary.


Stephen Joseph Bradley was born (date unknown). "Steve is the youngest of the brothers and I think lives in Colorado. There is a monument to him in Boulder for his invention of the snowcat or groomer. Dave and Steve were both excellent nordic combined skiers. They were at Dartmouth together and missed their Olympic chances because of WWII." [Markus Bradley letter, 2002] Parents: Harold Cornelius Bradley and Mary Josephine Crane.

Spouse: Anne Hurlburt. Anne Hurlburt and Stephen Joseph Bradley were married. Children were: Lynn Bradley, Daniel Bradley, Kathy Bradley, Timothy Bradley.


Steven Rama Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: David John Bradley and Elizabeth Bancroft McLane.


Sue Bradley was born on 7 April 1774. She died in 1794 at the age of 20. Parents: Jabez Bradley and Esther Beach.


Timo Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: David McLane (Darby) Bradley and Liisa Muukari.

Spouse: Piia Huttunen. Piia Huttunen and Timo Bradley were married. Resided in Vershire, Vermont, 2002. No children at that time.


Timothy Bradley died in 1997. Parents: Stephen Joseph Bradley and Anne Hurlburt.


Walter Bradley was born on 2 October 1807. Parents: Hon. Dan Bradley and Nancy Rose.


Sir William Bradley lived in West Riding, Yorkshire, England. Sir William Bradley was a friend of Cromwell and a major in the Parliamentary army.

Spouse: Mrs. William Bradley. Children were: William Bradley.


Rev. William Bradley was born (date unknown). Parents: Robert Gamble Bradley and Mabel Gibson.