Capt. Alva Bradley
Capt. Alva Bradley in the middle decades of the last century was easily one of the foremost figures in the shipping industry of the Great Lakes. His career was a progressive one. He began as a sailor before the mast, was a vessel master many years, and built and owned boats until the Bradley fleet was one of the largest under individual management on the lakes. With all due credit to her other sources of prosperity Cleveland is primarily a great port of commerce, and it would not be easy to over emphasize the part played by Captain Bradley in building up these transportation interests.
He was of New England birth and ancestry and at the same time represented one of the early pioneer families of the Ohio Western Reserve. He was born at Ellington, Connecticut, November 27, 1814 , son of Leonard and Roxanna Bradley.
Leonard Bradley was born in the Town of Ellington, Tolland County, Connecticut, November 4, 1792. He migrated to Brownhelm, Ohio, in the year 1817, located lands, and remained two years, after which he returned to Connecticut and married Roxanna, daughter of William Thrall, of Tolland County, and immediately returned to Ohio, where he was identified as a pioneer farmer. By this union were born four children, viz., Capt. Alva Bradley; William Bradley, a resident of Brownhelm; Betsy, deceased; and Julia. Mrs. Leonard Bradley died February 25, 1858.
Mr. Bradley married for his second wife Emily, widow of William Nye, of Onondago (sic) County, New York, and daughter of John Thompson, who was of Scotch birth and ancestry. Mr. Bradley was an ardent advocate of republicanism during his latter days, being formerly a member of the old whig party, and served his township as trustee and in other offices from time to time. When a young man he carried a lady (who wished to visit friends, not having seen any white ladies in several months) over the Vermillion River on an ox, he riding one and the lady the other ox, the oxen having to swim on account of the depth of the stream.
Mr. Bradley remained on the old homestead until the date of his death, which occurred May 3, 1875. His wife survived him, still remaining on the old homestead, surrounded by many friends and tenderly cared for in her declining years by her children.
In 1823 the Bradley family gave up a home among the barren hills of New England and started for the new Connecticut of Ohio. A wagon carried them to Albany, New York, whence they journeyed by canal boat to Buffalo, and there took a small sailing vessel which carried them the rest of the way to Cleveland. This was Alva Bradley's first experience on the Great Lakes, and it is possible that at this time he received some of the impressions which seriously and permanently inclined him to a seafaring career and which caused him some ten years later, after he had gained his education in the common schools and had worked with his father to clear away woods and brush from the homestead near Brownhelm in Lorain County, to seek opportunity to become a sailor. It is said that he left his parents' home with all his possessions in a bundle and gained his first opportunity as a sailor on board the schooner Liberty. He worked before the masts on several vessels, including the Young Leopold, Edward Bancroft, Express and Commodore Lawrence. The first boat he sailed as master was Olive Branch, running in trade from the island to the South Shore ports of Lake Erie. This boat was owned by Captain Joseph P. Atkinson, and was a small vessel of only fifteen tons. He next had charge of the schooner Commodore Lawrence, owned by the Geauga Furnace Company of Vermillion. It was a boat of forty-seven tons, old measurement. He was next master in succession of the schooner South America, which, in association with Ahira Cobb, Captain Bradley built at Vermillion, a boat of about two hundred tons; the schooner Birmingham, also built at Vermillion by Mr. Burton Parsons and sold to the firm of Cobb & Bradley, who by that time had formed a close partnership in the vessel business; also the schooner Ellington. The firm of Bradley & Cobb constructed one of the first propellers operated on the Great Lakes, the old Indiana, of which Captain Bradley was master. The Indiana, of 350 tons, sailed between Buffalo and Chicago. Captain Bradley commanded all these boats and others and was active on the lakes as a sailor and master for about fifteen years.
Soon after the construction of the Indiana he came ashore and employed others to command his craft. He located his home at Vermillion, and there took active charge of the ship yards. A partial list of the vessels Captain Bradley built in later years is as follows, indicating the name of the boat, the year it was built, and its tonnage; The Challenge, 1853, 238; the Bay City, 1854, 190; the C. C. Griswold, 1855, 359; the Queen City, 1856, 358; the Wellington, 1856, 300; the Exchange, 1858, 390; the S. H. Kimball, 1861, 418; the Wagstaff, 1863, 412; the J. F. Card, 1864, 370; the Escanaba, 1865, 568; the Negaunee, 1867, 850. All of these at the particular time they were constructed was as large as could be handled through streams and at the dock.
From 1868 to 1882 Captain Bradley in association with others built eighteen vessels and at the time of his death it comprised a large fleet. In 1868 he centered all his interests at Cleveland, moving his shipyards to that city. He continued to build and float lake vessels at the rate of one each season. His business became so extensive that he deemed it economy to carry his own insurance, and considering the efficiency and carefulness of the organization he built up and his good fortune this was a step of wisdom and prudence. It is said that he never lost a vessel or had a wreck during his personal career as captain, and as a vessel owner only five boats were lost.
Captain Bradley was a man of simple, matter-of-fact character. His office was always exceedingly plain. For several years it was on Water Street and later in the Merchants National Bank Building at the corner of Superior and Bank streets. He was noted for the regularity of his habits. Like many old sailors he was a man of few words, though in his personal relations was not by any means stern and had a reserve fund of quiet by wearing geniality. One who knew him says that he had about "the brightest pair of eyes that ever twinkled in a man's head." He began life without a dollar, and was rated as one of the wealthy men of the city when he passed away at his home on Euclid Avenue November 28, 1885, just one day after his seventy-first birthday. His mother died at the old homestead at Brownhelm in 1858, his father dying about 1875.
In 1851 Captain Bradley married Helen M. Burgess, of Milan, Ohio. Mrs. Bradley died August 26, 1896. All the shipping interests around the Great Lakes recognized a distinct loss in the death of Captain Bradley, and his standing in business affairs is also indicated by the fact that resolutions of respect were offered by the Cleveland Board of Trade and the Savings & Trust Company.
His extensive business interests have been continued by his only son, Morris A. Bradley, who is in many ways a counterpart of his father, especially in his possession of quiet, unostentatious manners and his rugged business integrity. To Captain Bradley and wife were born four children, the son Morris being the third in age. The three daughters are: Mrs. Norman S. Keller, of Cleveland; Mrs. C. E. Grover, who died in December, 1886; and Mrs. C. F. Morehouse who died in 1894.
From Cleveland - Special Limited Edition, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York, 1918 v.1