his shire, a lawyer’s lawyer, and a spinner of great stories, well-loved by all.
Legacy
The Westminster Historical Society web page called it “a modern day King Tut’s tomb.”48
Ray Massucco tells the story best,
of how he and several others entered the law office of William Czar Bradley in 1998, with a few family exceptions the first to vis- it that room since 1858. It was as if he had just stepped out the door 150 years be- fore, leaving papers and books strewn on the table, all covered with a thick coat of dust. John Dumville of the State Historic Preservation Office found funds to restore the building, archive the papers at UVM, and open the small building to visitors on Sunday afternoons in the summer. Many in the community gave time and energy to re- store the building. The Bradley, Dorr, Carpenter, and Willard families have been generous and diligent in keeping the memory of Stephen Rowe Bradley and William Czar Bradley alive, in- cluding underwriting the costs of the publi- cation of their papers. Like the office, their lives have been restored, their contribu- tions and “admirable peculiarities” pre- served in memory. They were characters. They were father
and son.
____________________ Paul S. Gillies, Esq., is a partner in the Montpelier firm of Tarrant, Gillies, Merri- man & Richardson and is a regular contrib- utor to the Vermont Bar Journal. A collec- tion of his columns has recently been pub- lished under the title of Uncommon Law, Ancient Roads, and Other Ruminations on Vermont Legal History by the Vermont His- torical Society.
____________________ 1
STEPHEN ROW BRADLEY: LETTERS OF A REVOLUTION-
ARY WAR PATRIOT AND VERMONT SENATOR (Dorr Brad- ley Carpenter ed., 2009); THE HONORABLE WILLIAM CZAR BRADLEY: HIS CORRESPONDENCE AND SPEECHES
1782-1872 (Dorr Bradley Carpenter ed., 2010). 2
TOWNSHIP NUMBER ONE (2012). 3
JESSIE HAAS, WESTMINSTER, VERMONT, 1735-2000:
VERMONT STATE PAPERS 554 (William Slade comp., 1823). There were attorneys practicing in Vermont before then, but SRB was the first offi-
cial licensed attorney, along with Noah Smith. 4
5
394-399 (1942). 6
STEPHEN ROWE BRADLEY, supra note 1, at 94. CHARLES MINER THOMPSON, INDEPENDENT VERMONT
Unknown author, Biography, in STEPHEN ROWE
BRADLEY, supra note 1 at 38. Stephen Rowe Brad- ley even had a Vermont town named in his honor. In 1790, the Vermont legislature issued a charter for Bradleyvale, which was divided between Con- cord and Victory in 1856. Esther Munroe Swift, VERMONT PLACE NAMES: FOOTPRINTS OF HISTORY 196
(1977, 1996). 7
The middle name reflects the father’s great admiration for Peter the Great. He wanted his son to have the middle name of “Peter,” but his wife objected and compromised with “Czar.” They gave his sister “Czarina” as a middle name. 1 ANNALS OF BRATTLEBORO 1681-1865 at 529 (Mary
www.vtbar.org THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2014 13
Rogers Cabot ed., 1921). 8
Id. at 11.
S.B. WILLARD, A TRIBUTE OF AFFECTION TO THE
MEMORY OF HON. WILLIAM C. BRADLEY 14, 57 (1869). 9
10 WILLIAM CZAR BRADLEY, supra note 1, at 16-17. 11
BRADLEY, supra note 1, at 2. 12
13
599-600 (1858). 14
Id. at 147.
15 16
Id. at 125-126.
Stephen Rowe Bradley, Vermont’s Appeal to the Candid and Impartial World, in 2 RECORDS OF THE GOVERNOR AND COUNCIL OF THE STATE OF VERMONT
200 (E.P. Walton ed., 1874). 17
18 19
Id. at 204. Id. at 208. Id. at 209.
20 HALL, supra note 13, at 596. 21 THOMPSON, supra note 5, at 410.
22 1 ETHAN AND IRA ALLEN: COLLECTED WORKS 181 (J.
Kevin Graffagnino ed., 1992). 23
MARCUS A. MCCORISON, VERMONT IMPRINTS 1778- 1820 at 68 (1963); 5 VERMONT HISTORICAL GAZETTEER
593 (Abby Maria Hemenway comp., 1891). 24
125. 25
WILLIAM CZAR BRADLEY, supra note 1, at 124- WILLARD, supra note 8, at 9.
26 ANNALS OF BRATTLEBORO, supra note 7, at 528. 27 GAZETTEER, supra note 23, at 594. 28 RECORDS, supra note 16, at 202.
29
Joslyn v. Smith, 13 Vt. 353, 355-356 (1841). 30 ANNALS OF BRATTLEBORO, supra note 7, at 102. 31 HAAS, supra note 2, at 147.
32 LEONARD DEMING, CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL OF-
FICERS OF VERMONT 60-61 (1851). 33
Vt. Const. 1777, Ch.2, Sec. XIV, in PAUL S. GIL-
LIES & D. GREGORY SANFORD, RECORDS OF THE VERMONT COUNCIL OF CENSORS 11 (1991); STEPHEN ROWE BRAD-
LEY, supra note 1, at 53-55. 34
37 38
Id. at 97. 3 RECORDS OF THE VERMONT GOVERNOR AND COUN-
CIL 68, 88 (E.P. Walton ed., 1876). 39
62 (1926). 40
41
Id. at 63. Id. at 84.
42 WILLARD, supra note 8, at 86.
43 ANNALS OF BRATTLEBORO, supra note 7, at 531. 44 HAAS, supra note 2, at 148. Id. at 146.
45
46 ANNALS OF BRATTLEBORO, supra note 7, at 538. 47 MALCOLM GLADWELL, DAVID AND GOLIATH (2013).
48
http://www.westminstervthistory.org/bradle- ylawoffice.html
Frank Fish, Stephen Rowe Bradley, in 5 WALTER HILL CROCKETT, VERMONT THE GREEN MOUNTAIN STATE
35 THOMPSON, supra note 5, at 397-398. 36
HALL, supra note 13, at 343. Id. at 55.
Nicolas Muller III, Forward, in STEPHEN ROWE HAAS, supra note 2, at 126-127.
2 BENJAMIN H. HALL, HISTORY OF EASTERN VERMONT
Ruminations: The Bradleys of Westminster
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