Friday, February 22, 2008

Bradford Carmichael Jr.

Bradford Carmichael Jr. was born in 1842 in Sodus, Wayne County, New York, the son of Bradford Sr. (1818-1890) and Margaret (1821-1872).

In the spring of 1835, Bradford Sr., a Free Will Baptist, in company with his brother Charles and their father Silas, all New Jersey natives but then residing in Wayne County, New York, moved to Michigan and settled in Lenawee County. The following year they moved to Wheatland in Hillsdale County, where Bradford Sr. lived for many years; he was living in Wheatland in 1840 and 1850.

Bradford Sr. married New York native Margaret A. in about 1841 in Wheatland, but curiously all of his children were born in New York between about 1842 and 1847, a period of time when he was reportedly living and working in Wheatland. By 1850, however, the family had definitely settled together in Wheatland, where Bradford Jr. was attending school with his siblings.

By 1860 Bradford’s family had left Hillsdale County and were living in Oneida Township, Eaton County. That same year Bradford Jr., also a Free Will Baptist like his father, was a farmer living with his family in Oneida, Eaton County, Michigan.

Bradford Jr. was 19 years old and probably living in the Grand Ledge area of Eaton County when he enlisted in Company B on May 13, 1861. In June of 1862 he was reported sick in a hospital in Bottom’s Bridge, Virginia, suffering from a “cold after battle.” He soon recovered and rejoined the Regiment. He was first reported missing in action on August 29, 1862, at Second Bull Run, but in fact he was killed in action on August 29. He was presumably among the unknown soldiers who were reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery.

By 1870 Bradford Sr. and Margaret were living in Lansing’s Second Ward. He eventually moved to Portland, Ionia County where he was working as a merchant in 1876 when he remarried a widow, Ohio native Caroline Waddell Henderson (b. 1836) in Ionia County.

In October of 1888, Bradford Sr., was still living in Michigan when he applied for a dependent father’s pension no. 381,717but the certificate was never granted. By 1890 he was living in Greenville, Montcalm County. (He died that same year presumably in Greenville.)

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