Reflections of Asbury Park

By Janet H. Burgents

Asbury Parks Early History James A. Bradley

James A. Bradley was born on Valentines Day, 1830, at the Old Blazing Star Inn in Rossville on Staten Island in New York. He was the son of Adam and Hannah Bradley. He was baptized a Catholic.

When he was only five, his father died from alcohol related problems. Two years later, his mother married Charles Smith and moved to Cherry Street in the Bowery. In those years before the Civil War, the citys population was exploding. The lower east side was the first stop for tens of thousands of immigrants to America. The original buildings had no heat, light, or running water and few windows until the late 1960s when the state enacted laws that forced landlords to improve living conditions. On hot nights, you could see tenants sleeping on fire escapes to get relief from summer heat. In 1837, the year they moved, a general economic panic had taken over the city. In that year over 100 firms went under, railroads fell, banks collapsed and building construction stopped. The citys working class crowded into tiny tenement apartments. The poor sewer system and primitive health services led to massive outbreaks of typhus and cholera.

Bradleys stepfather set up a notions store selling groceries, meat, clothing, shoes and other items. Bradley was only seven years old at the time. He and his stepfather had a peddlers wagon, their favorite spot was down on Catherine Street outside the new specialty store, Lord & Taylor.

Bradley obtained his early education in the New York public school system, and in later life continued his education through self-directed reading.

At twelve, Bradley worked as a laborer at William Daviss Paper Mill in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

As a teenager, Bradley hung with a rowdy immigrant crowd. He soon developed a fondness for wine. By the early 1840s the Bowery became more of a pleasure zone. Small hotels offered free vaudevilles to attract customers including ventriloquism, dancing, circus acts and comics. Young Bradley loved the shows, he tried to attend at least three a week. At thirteen, he witnesses the development of one of the most popular styles of the day; the minstrel show. They played reels, jigs and told down-home plantation jokes. Negros were barred from Bowery theaters, but minstrel shows became the rage.

Bradleys mother decided that her teenage son was learning too much too last. She sent him to Bloomfield, New Jersey where a friend from her childhood owned a farm. He spent a year in Jersey milking cows and feeding chickens. He disliked it intensely. Twice he ran away and was caught trying to catch a ferry back to the city. Finally, at age sixteen, he returned to the lower East Side.

Upon returning, he apprenticed as a brushmaker in Francis R. Furnolds factory in New York City. He was made foreman at age twenty-one and remained for seven years. It was hard work in a cramped space that stunk of hog bristle and glue. The animal hair had to be washed by hand, dried in a hot room, bleached, sorted for length, shaped, tied, glued and inserted into a handle. Depending on the type of brush, a man might make six to eight dozen a day. The hours were long and when work was over, Bradley had to return to his crowded, narrow tenement apartment.

During this period, Bradley married Helen M. Packard, daughter of Lewis Packard from Boston. Helen was an educated Rutgers student and a staunch Methodist. The two of them resolved to start their own business and through self-discipline, managed to save one thousand dollars. In 1857, they completed payment on a lot uptown. Then, borrowing the capital, the twenty seven year old Bradley launched his own brush company, Bradley and Smith, located in Pearl Street in New York City. It became a very successful enterprise.

Bradley was a vigorous, large built man, rough in appearance, but full of energy. While his wife kept shop, he was upstairs cutting, shaping and gluing brushes. Later in life, Bradl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 29, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462837106

Janet H. Burgents

A graduate of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Janet Burgents now serves as President of The Writers’ Club of Delaware County. She has published several articles for Town Talk Newspapers and Cappers Magazine. As a teacher, she has written and illustrated her own course materials on a wide number of topics. Her first book, “The History of Folcroft,” shows her desire to preserve the past of her Delaware County community of Folcroft, Pennsylvania.

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