Ann Weaver Bradley

Last updated
Ann Weaver Bradley
ANN WEAVER BRADLEY.jpg
Portrait photo from A Woman of the Century
Born
Sally Ann Weaver

May 19, 1834
DiedJanuary 30, 1913
Alma mater Hillsdale College
Occupations
  • educator
  • temperance worker
  • writer
Organization Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Movement temperance
Spouse
George S. Bradley
(m. 1858)
Children4

Ann Weaver Bradley (1834-1913), was an American educator, temperance worker, and writer. [1] She did notable work for temperance in Kansas and Michigan. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Sally Ann Weaver was born in Hartland, New York, May 19, 1834. Her parents, William and Mary Earl Weaver, removed from New York to Michigan during her infancy, first settling near the present city of Adrian, Michigan and later to Hillsdale County, Michigan. [3] She was reared in that State. Her early philanthropic tendencies, fostered by home training, prepared her to espouse the anti-slavery cause. [1]

While attending Hillsdale College, she became a Christian. [1]

Career

Her earliest ambition was to become a teacher. Attaining that position before her fourteenth birthday, she continued in that career for thirty years, particularly in the department of literature. [1]

On December 12, 1858, she married George S. Bradley, [3] a theologian from Oberlin, then tutor in Hillsdale, Michigan. Thereafter, she served as a pastor's wife or lady principal in the seminaries under her husband's charge in Maine, Wisconsin, and Iowa. [1]

While in Wisconsin during the civil war, her husband, as chaplain of the 22nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, accompanied General William Tecumseh Sherman. While he was in that service, the last one of their three children died. [1]

Bradley returned to Hillsdale and engaged in teaching, At the close of the war, her husband resumed his old pastorate near Racine, Wisconsin, and there for two years they worked. Then followed two years of seminary work in Rochester, Wisconsin, and six in Evansville, Wisconsin. There was born to them their last and only living child, Charles Clement. [1]

Wilton, Iowa, was for the next five years the scene of their work. Then Mrs. Bradley began her public work for temperance. The Iowa agitation for prohibition roused her to action. Stepping into the ranks of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), she organized and carried on a union, a temperance school, and lectured in her own town and vicinity. Later, in central and eastern Kansas, where her husband's work led, her temperance efforts led to three years of invalidism, from which she has never fully rallied. [1]

In the feld of literature, she was a prolific writer. Stories and poems followed each other rapidly, all being published in the standard periodicals of the day. [3]

When her husband became pastor of the Congregational Church in Hudson, Michigan, she became Michigan State superintendent of narcotics for the WCTU. [1] In 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Bradley returned to Hillsdale, where in 1900, Mr. Bradley died. [3]

Death

She died in Hillsdale, Michigan, on January 30, 1913, after a long illness. [3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). "BRADLEY, Mrs. Ann Weaver". A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Charles Wells Moulton. pp. 114–15. Retrieved 18 February 2025.PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
  2. Logan, Mrs John A. (1912). "Women as Temperance Workers". The Part Taken by Women in American History. Perry-Nalle Publishing Company. p. 672. Retrieved 18 February 2025.PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sally Ann Weaver Bradley, Author, Poet and Temperance Worker". Detroit Evening Times. 30 January 1913. p. 2. Retrieved 18 February 2025 via Newspapers.com.PD-icon.svg This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain .