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Burks/BC
NEGRO PIONEER
The oldest employee in any governmental department at the Nebraska
State Capitol at Lincoln, is harry H. Bradley, colored custodian of the
State Senate Chamber, now the Uni-Cameral body l For thirty-eight years
he has assisted in the sessions of legislature, never missing a session.
Harry first alqw servioe during the administration of Governor
Charles H. Dietrich. It was during Governor Dietrich's administration
that he witnessed the election of two United States 6enators by the
legislatures in joint session, as the culmination of a dead...look which
lasted more than ten weeks.
He was the first colored child born at Seward Nebraska, a small
town about twenty-five miles from the State Capitol at Lincoln. His
father and mother were both former slaves coming to the state about
seventy years ago. The hMtory or his mother is both unique and inter-
esting, in asmuch as she was a maid in the household of President
Buchanon st Aashington D. C. before coming to Nebr. Harry often relates
the story his mother so often told him of her early youth on the
plant-tion in Virginia during slavery; Particularly of the time when
she was seperated in her childhood from hr only brother, and haw
half a centuny later they were united in Nebr. Ihe circumstances Burs.
rounding her coming to Debraska also arm worthy of mention because it
was of the fact that Phineas Hitchcock being appointed the first
territorial Senator from Iebr that aocounted for her have coming
to this state. Phineas Hitchcock at the time of his appointment had
an only child Gilbert, who later like his father also became a United
States Senator from Nebraska. It was in complying with the wishes
of Harry's mother, that she was recommended to Senitor Phineas
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Hitchcock as nurse -maid for his son Gilbert when the Senator was
preparing to return to him home in Omaha, Nebraska. She was recommended
to the Senator by Miss Elisha Lane, niece of President was a bachelor.
She was retained as maid in the Senator's home at Omaha for a
number of years, and then she met William Bradley and they were married.
At first they homesteaded at lview Nebr., and it was here their eldest
children were born. When they moved to Seward to farm, harry became
the first colored child to be born in that community. There were five
children in the Bradley family, an older brother John who still awns
at Seward, an Harry, irke-e6441-ferme-04-Sewerd, who this narrative is
more or less about, are the only ones now living.
Harry recounts that when b s was quite young his mother had
000assion to go to Ulysses Nebr for a few days. Ille their she was
told there was in the community a crippled colored man who had been
there many years called Major Brown. he looked him up and they
discovered as they compared notes he vas the baby brother whom she
had been separated from a half -century ago on that Virginia plantation.
Her brother told her he had come west with the soldiers before
the Civil War, and participated in the Indian Wars as an orderly.
He became ill while his company was in Nebraska and they had
left him on the plains to die. Here he was found by a family named
Reed from the community where Ulysses now stands, mho oared for him
until his health had returned. He remained with this family for many
years, and during this tile took up a homestead in Butler County,
later selling his preemption. Major Brown became the first mail
carrier at 44rd, also the first colored mail carrier in Nebraska,
For forty-five years he was resident of that community; he died at
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the age of one hundred years.
Harry Bradley is now sixty-three years old, and during his
eventful carreor has had a wide experience as a traveler. He has
visited London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Paris at the World's Expositions.
He has held many places of trust at the great Expositions, at Chicago,
Buffalo, Omaha, and St. Louis, Was chief steward at the Nebraska
Sod House at Buffalo. He had charge of the roller -chair storage
house of the Clarkson Conoession comoany. He was special guard to
Susan B. Anthony, the famous suffrage leader, now dead.
"She predicted that I would live to see women in the Nebraska
Legislature, and I have," Bradley said in recalling this part of
his carreer.
Harry has had the distinction of putting out two fires in the
old Cepitol building, and also extinguishing the first bl,se which
occurred in the new one. One of his jobs in the former building was
to remove tubs around from place to place to catch water that came
trough a leaky roof, and keep it from spoiling books in the library.
Harry has earned the respeot and stands high in the estimation of
all who know him. He is excellent citizen of ht state, and credit to
his race. He has made himself so useful that many solons have coma
to regard him as an indispensible adjunct of the business of law making.