by Paul S. Gillies, Esq.
RUMINATIONS
A Father and a Son: The Bradleys of Westminster
The Windham County Courthouse is an
art museum, as well as a courthouse. The
walls of the courtroom contain the greatest
collection of portraits of lawyers and judges anywhere in Vermont, and no attorney
who appears there in person can escape
the penetrating gaze of better lawyers who
have graced that room with their wit and
strength of character. In the left-hand corner of the courtroom, Stephen Rowe Bradley looks out at you. His eyes are sharp, and
he appears to be taking his measure of you.
The largest painting in the room is a portrait of William Czar Bradley, the son of Stephen Rowe. It’s a full-sized color painting
of a full-sized man, who practiced law in
this room for fifty years. He’s standing, and
he’s very serious and determined, perhaps
a little tired. The artist who painted it must
have known the portrait of the father. Stephen Rowe Bradley looks at you; William
Czar Bradley looks at the bench.
The papers of Stephen Rowe Bradley
and William Czar Bradley were recently
published in paper and digital form.1 Coincidentally, Jessie Haas’s remarkable Westminster, Vt., 1735-2000: Township No. One
has also been published, revealing more
about the lives of these, Vermont’s most in8
teresting father and son.2 These sources allow us to invade their private lives, in a way
neither of them would have expected, and
assess their public lives from the inside.
The father was our first attorney. Vermont’s highest court admitted him to practice on May 26, 1779.3 He was our first
prosecutor, as state’s attorney in Cumberland County, and in one letter described
himself as attorney general. “[R]eturn
peacefully to your families,” he wrote the
inhabitants of Guilford, “and your persons
and properties will be protected,” after the
uprisings of 1783 by residents loyal to New
York.4 He wrote Vermont’s Appeal to the
Candid and Impartial World (1779), the first
legal articulation of Vermont’s claim to independence from New York. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. He was
among the first rank of patriots to the Vermont cause (although he first arrived in Vermont in 1779). He was Ethan Allen’s lawyer.5 He was Brigadier General of the Vermont Militia during the war. He successfully negotiated the claims of New York to
ensure Vermont statehood, with Nathaniel Chipman. He was the first U.S. senator
from the eastern side