Legacy
The Westminster Historical Society web
page called it “a modern day King Tut’s
tomb.”48 Ray Massucco tells the story best,
of how he and several others entered the
law office of William Czar Bradley in 1998,
with a few family exceptions the first to visit that room since 1858. It was as if he had
just stepped out the door 150 years before, leaving papers and books strewn on
the table, all covered with a thick coat of
dust. John Dumville of the State Historic
Preservation Office found funds to restore
the building, archive the papers at UVM,
and open the small building to visitors on
Sunday afternoons in the summer. Many in
the community gave time and energy to restore the building.
The Bradley, Dorr, Carpenter, and Willard
families have been generous and diligent
in keeping the memory of Stephen Rowe
Bradley and William Czar Bradley alive, including underwriting the costs of the publication of their papers. Like the office, their
lives have been restored, their contributions and “admirable peculiarities” preserved in memory.
They were characters. They were father
and son.
____________________
Paul S. Gillies, Esq., is a partner in the
Montpelier firm of Tarrant, Gillies, Merriman & Richardson and is a regular contributor to the Vermont Bar Journal. A collection of his columns has recently been published under the title of Uncommon Law,
Ancient Roads, and Other Ruminations on
Vermont Legal History by the Vermont Historical Society.
____________________
Stephen Row Bradley: Letters of a RevolutionWar Patriot and Vermont Senator (Dorr Bradley Carpenter ed., 2009); The Honorable William
Czar Bradley: His Correspondence and Speeches
1782-1872 (Dorr Bradley Carpenter ed., 2010).
2
Jessie Haas, Westminster, Vermont, 1735-2000:
Township Number One (2012).
3
Vermont State Papers 554 (William Slade
comp., 1823). There were attorneys practicing in
Vermont before then, but SRB was the first official licensed attorney, along with Noah Smith.
4
Stephen Rowe Bradley, supra note 1, at 94.
5
Charles Miner Thompson, Independent Vermont
394-399 (1942).
6
Unknown author, Biography, in Stephen Rowe
Bradley, supra note 1 at 38. Stephen Rowe Bradley even had a Vermont town named in his honor.
In 1790, the Vermont legislature issued a charter
for Bradleyvale, which was divided between Concord and Victory in 1856. Esther Munroe Swift,
Vermont Place Names: Footprints of History 196
(1977, 1996).
7
The middle name reflects the father’s great
admiration for Peter the Great. He wanted his
son to have the middle name of “Peter,” but his
wife objected and compromised with “Czar.”
They gave his sister “Czarina” as a middle name.
1 Annals of Brattleboro 1681-1865 at 529 (Mary
1
ary
www.vtbar.org
Rogers Cabot ed., 1921).
8
S.B. Willard, A Tribute of Affection to the
Memory of Hon. William C. Bradley 14, 57 (1869).
9
Id. at 11.
10
William Czar Bradley, supra note 1, at 16-17.
11
Nicolas Muller III, Forward, in Stephen Rowe
Bradley, supra note 1, at 2.
12
Haas, supra note 2, at 126-127.
13
2 Benjamin H. Hall, History of Eastern Vermont
599-600 (1858).
14
Id. at 147.
15
Id. at 125-126.
16
Stephen Rowe Bradley, Vermont’s Appeal to
the Candid and Impartial World, in 2 Records of
the Governor and Council of the State of Vermont
200 (E.P. Walton ed., 1874).
17
Id. at 204.
18 )%