My grandmother had a set of photos on a wall in her bedroom that she called "The Wall of Female Ancestors." The earliest photo was of Esther Bradley Bradley.
Here is what my grandmother had to say about Esther:
The portrait of my great-great-great-grandmother, Esther Bradley Bradley is
a photograph of a daguerreotype. Where the original daguerreotype is now I do not
know. Perhaps some one in the Bradley family owns it. But my grandmother
borrowed it many years ago and had the photographic reproduction made. Esther
Bradley, mother of Esther Bradley Pomeroy, was born in Hamden, Conn., Feb. 23,
1765, married Jabez Bradley there, Sept. 21, 1785, went with him to Lee, Mass. In
1788, and thence to Northville, N.Y., Feb. 1794. In an old scrap book is preserved a
clipping from the Northville paper of June 15, 1859, containing her obituary, part of
which reads as follows:
“Coming thus early to this county, she shared
largely the trials and hardships of the pioneers of
civilization. Her journey here was performed in the
winter season, with sled and oxen, over a rough, and
to some extent unbeaten road. Accompanied by her
husband and four children, after three full weeks, she
arrived at her log-cabin home. Though from childhood
she had a delicate constitution, still her energy of
character and perseverance led her to regard as trivial
obstacles that would have daunted and disheartened a
less noble and courageous spirit...”
The photograph shows an old lady in a black silk gown with white collar. She
wears a close-fitting white bonnet, such as the custom for elderly women in those
days, and her eyes gaze at the world though spectacles, calmly and with strength and
serenity. Her features have been handed down to her granddaughter, Julia Pomeroy,
her great-granddaughter, Harriet Milliken, and to her great-great-granddaughter,
Edith Hughitt. Studying her picture I think of how that delicately nurtured girl saw
the great War of the Revolution bring into being the little new country that has since
grown so great; followed her husband to a wild and far-distant country; and bore ten
children, surviving six of them and her husband.
Family tradition goes that when Jabez Bradley died in 1817, Esther took her
eldest son during the slack winter season, and drove an ox-team and sledge all the
way back to Connecticut, to bring back the tombstone that marks his grave in the
Kings Ferry cemetery. She lived to her eighty-sixth year, loved and honored and a
power for good in her community. She lies in the cemetery at Kings Ferry, N.Y. her
tombstone bearing this simple inscription:
“Esther Bradley, relict of Jabez Bradley
Died June 10, 1850
Aged 85 years”
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