My Genealogy Hound

ALBERT BRADSHAW was born in Christian County, Ky., March 1, 1809. His father, Edward Bradshaw, came from Henrico County, Va., when quite a young man, and was one of the early settlers and surveyors of Christian County. On May 30, 1832, Albert Bradshaw married Marianne Rumsey, the youngest daughter of Dr. Edward Rumsey, who was one of the earliest physicians of that county. After his marriage he resided on his farm, about ten miles south of Hopkinsville; he was quite an energetic and pushing farmer, and was very successful in that calling. Together with his brothers and sisters he had inherited from his father a large body of the fertile land, for which that portion of Christian County is famous. During the year 1848, one of the numerous land-sharks and professional litigants of that day, and backed by one of the shrewdest land lawyers of the State, set up an adverse claim to a greater part of this land; it proved to be one of the most hotly contested cases ever known in Kentucky, though such land suits there were of frequent occurrence in the early settlement of the State, growing out of the many different modes of acquiring title and the conflicting and overlapping surveys, that part of the State east of the Tennessee River never having been sectionized. Mr. Bradshaw’s case was named in the docket from 1848 to 1861; it passed through numerous trials and retrials; verdicts were set aside, and it went to the court of appeals six times. Mr. Bradshaw became so much enlisted in the defense of what he considered to be his rightful inheritance, that he became quite proficient in the complex land laws of Kentucky; a great portion of the time he managed the case alone and drew up a brief for the court of appeals, on the last appearance of the case in that court, that was considered a very able document, and had much to do with his gaining the case, just as the clouds of civil war were gathering over the country in 1861. In the meantime, in 1856, Mr. Bradshaw had moved to McCracken County, where he and his wife now reside, on his farm near the city of Paducah, both having attained a good old age. He had been all his life a decided Whig, and as much devoted to Henry Clay as were the soldiers of Napoleon for the Little Corporal, so that at the present day, he finds it a little difficult to locate himself in politics; since the demise of the old Whig party, he sometimes votes the Republican and sometimes the Democratic ticket for president. At the breaking out of the war, he favored the preservation of the Union. This aged couple have only reared two children to maturity: E. R. Bradshaw, the elder, and W. F. Bradshaw; they lost several children in infancy. P. S. -Since the preparation of the above sketch, and on March 30, 1885, Mr. Bradshaw was drowned by accidentally falling into a well.