Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/119

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BRADLEY.
BRADLEY.

in the same boat with Miss Dorothea L. Dix. All through the Peninsular Campaign she was on transport boats, which brought the sick and wounded from the battlefields. After the Seven Days Battles AMY MORRIS BRADLEY. she returned to Washington and helped to organize a home for discharged soldiers. In December, 1862, she was sent to Convalescent Camp, Alexandria, and remained in charge of the Relief Department until the close of the war, when, her special work for country and humanity being ended, her heart and mind turned anew to her original calling. In 1866, at the request of the Soldiers' Memorial Society, of Boston, Mass., and under the auspices of the American Unitarian Association, she went to Wilmington, N. C, as a teacher of poor white children. Her position at first was a trying one, for she was a stranger and a northerner. Modestly and firmly she took her place and began her work. She opened her school 9th January, 1867, with three children, in a very humble building. Within a week sixty-seven pupils were enrolled, and soon two additional teachers were engaged by her, and, as the number of pupils rapidly increased, new schools were opened, the "Hemenway," the "Pioneer" and the "Normal," and the corps of teachers increased accordingly. Such was the character of the instruction given, such the tone, spirit and influence of the schools, that within a few months, instead of being regarded with suspicion and aversion. Miss Bradley and her co-workers had the confidence and the grateful affection of the community, and large-minded citizens co-operated with the trustees of the Peabody Fund and other benefactors in erecting the needed buildings and forwarding the work. On the thirtieth of November, 1871, the corner-stone of the Tileston Normal School was laid, and it was opened in October, 1872. This building was the gift of Mrs. Mary Hemenway, of Boston, Mass., who had been deeply interested in Miss Bradley's wurk from its beginning, and whose appreciation of its importance and beneficence found expression in the annual contribution of $5,000 toward the support of the Tileston Normal School, from its opening in 1872 to its close in 1891. Failing health led Miss Bradley to resign her position in 1891.


BRADLEY, Mrs. Ann Weaver, educator and temperance worker, born in Hartland, Niagara county, N. Y., 19th May, 1834. Her parents, William and Mary Earl Weaver, removed from New York to Michigan during he r infancy, and she was reared in that State. Her early philanthropic tendencies, fostered by home training, prepared her to espouse the anti-slavery cause and to engage heartily in all reformatory efforts. Loving study for its own sake and feeling that in brain culture one could exert an influence for good on humanity, her earliest ambition was to become a teacher. Attaining that position before her fourteenth birthday, she continued thus to labor with never-failing zest for over thirty years. With a power to impress her own personality upon others and to evoke their latent capabilities, her work in the class-room was especially happy, particularly in the department of literature. While attending Hillsdale College, she publicly gave herself to Christ. In 1858 she was married to George S. Bradley, a theologue from Oberlin, then tutor in Hillsdale. Thereafter her influence for good was felt in all his labors, whether as pastor's wife or lady principal in the seminaries under his charge in Maine, Wisconsin and Iowa. While in Wisconsin, her husband, as chaplain of the Twenty-second Wisconsin Regiment, went with Sherman to the sea. While he was in that service, the last one of their three children died Mrs. Bradley returned to Hillsdale and ANN WEAVER BRADLEY. engaged in teaching, At the close of the war her husband resumed his old pastorate near Racine, Wis., and there for two years they worked. Then followed two years of seminary work in Rochester.