This week we take a look at the life and accomplishments of Doctor Samuel Beach Bradley.
Doctor Samuel Beach Bradley
Date of Birth: August 14, 1796, Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York
Death: October 8, 1880, West Greece/Parma Townline
Year of First Marriage: 1817, with Cornelia
Second Marriage to Sarah “Sally” Bartlett Bradley
Children William Bradley (1838–1907), Sarah Bradley (Cromwell) (1840-1930 (aged 89–90)), and a twin sister.
Other Rolls:
1823 served a term in the New York State Assembly
Greece Supervisor (1836-38), Postmaster (1828-1838), assessor (1841), and Commissioner of Common Schools (1825-1830) and (1830-1836) Then in he served as the Town Superintendent of Common Schools from (1844-1852) which he gave 19 years to the different roles in supporting education for the youth in the town of Greece years during the first two terms as Commissioner of Common Schools would be for District 6 which would later be known as District 13 at the Greece Parma border.
Samuel Beach Bradley was born on August 14, 1796, in Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York, to Reverend Joel Bradley and Mary Anne Beach Bradley. In 1814, Samuel, graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, and after college, he went to study Medicine, with Dr. Seth Hastings of Clifton, Oneida County. In 1817, at the age of 21, Bradley married 18-year-old Cornelia Bradley, but she died just a few months later, “a sorrow that shadowed his life for many years” and although he later remarried, he wrote in his diary of his “dear Cornelia” until the day he died.
Samuel started practicing in Eaton, New York, and in 1820 moved to Parma, New York; in 1823 he settled in West Greece, Monroe County, which became his home for the rest of his life. Samuel expanded from just practicing medicine to being a botanist as well.
He is cited as an authority in Gray’s Botany (5th ed.); in Paine’s “Catalogue of Plants of Oneida County and Vicinity” (1865) he is given as the sole authority for twenty-one species of plants found in the neighborhood of Rochester; and in the “List of Plants of Monroe County, New York, and Adjacent Territory,” published by the Rochester Academy of Science (1896), he was credited with eleven species not hitherto reported. A close and accurate observer, his work along the lake shore, inlets, and ponds was particularly thorough.
