Henry C. Bradford was born on March 12, 1757, in what is now Fauquier County, Virginia. His parents were William Bradford and Mary Morgan, daughter of Charles Morgan. Fauquier County had been established just two years later, in 1759, carved from Prince William County and named for Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier.
Henry’s childhood was marked by loss. His father William died around 1760, leaving Mary a widow with three young children—Henry, his younger sister Ann, and a brother William, born just a month after their father’s death. Mary Morgan Bradford later remarried William Nash, also of Fauquier County, around 1764.
At eleven years old, with his mother’s consent, Henry apprenticed himself to John Cook, a tailor, to learn a trade. It was a practical decision for a fatherless boy on the Virginia frontier—and it would not be his last act of self-reliance.
Shortly after the Revolutionary War broke out, Henry joined the Continental Army. He was still a teenager, probably around seventeen or eighteen years old. He was assigned to the Third Virginia Regiment under Captain John Chilton and Colonel Thomas Marshall. The 3rd Virginia was later part of Major General Adam Stephen’s 2nd Division at Brandywine.
By early 1777, Henry appears on the payroll of Captain Joseph Martin’s Company, serving under Major Anthony Bledsoe at Fort Blackmore in Fincastle County, Virginia. On September 11, 1777, he was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine—one of the largest and longest single-day battles of the entire Revolution. The American army under General George Washington faced the British under Sir William Howe. The 3rd Virginia was positioned south of Chester Road as reserve troops. Bradford rose to the rank of Sergeant.
By December 1777, Bradford was reported absent and wounded on the Company Muster roll and was discharged as Sergeant. Following the end of the war, he was granted a 1,000-acre land bounty by North Carolina in payment for his service.
After the war, Bradford headed west to claim his land bounty in what is now Sumner County. He traveled with a large group through the Cumberland Gap in the fall of 1784. During that year, an estimated 30,000 immigrants traveled into Kentucky via the Wilderness Road—and more than 100 were killed along it in that year alone.
In Hazelpatch, Kentucky, the travelers separated. Bradford’s group remained behind one more night. That night, they were attacked by Northern Indians. Fourteen were scalped and killed. Bradford was in his tent when the Indians burst in and seized him by his coat. He wriggled free and escaped. He caught an older horse, fashioned a makeshift bridle from twisted grapevines, found a wounded man on the trail, picked him up, and rode all night to the forward camp. He waited all day for other survivors. None came.
By 1794, Henry Bradford had settled on Drake’s Creek in Sumner County, about fifteen miles east of Nashville. He married Elizabeth Chichester Payne Blakemore, a young widow with a two-year-old daughter named Molly. Together, they would build the home that still stands today—and raise a family that would shape the future of Tennessee.
