Person:Michael Bradley (2)

Michael Bradley was born in Ireland about 1823.^N1 He may be the Michael Bradley who applied for naturalization in Essex County, New Jersey, on 23 October 1844. Sometime between 1850 and 1852 he went to California as part of the Gold Rush. He was living in Rose's Bar, Yuba County, when he wrote a letter to his wife on 22 April 1852. He had presumably read of the finding of significant amounts of gold there in the newspaper reports.

The Buffalo (NY) Daily Republic, 22 September 1851 Mr. N. W. Brooks, who has just arrived from Rose’s Bar, states that a company of five persons, with whom he is engaged, has recently taken out in fourteen days fifty-two pounds of gold. (Under California News: From The Mining Districts

The Washington (D.C.), 23 September 1851

A company of five persons at Rose’s Bar, the Times is informed, have recently taken out 52 pounds of gold in fourteen days. The claim was purchased for $1,600. (Under Items form the San Francisco papers)

In 1853, his name appears on a list of persons in Yuba County eligible for military service. This is the last record that has been found of him. He has not been found in any census of California. His name has not been found in any of the Great Registers of Yuba County. No letters from the family to his wife or daughter over the next thirty years ever mention him. The Catholic cemetery at Smartsville, where many of his wife's relatives are buried, contains no headstone for him. According to the priest I spoke to at the Catholic church at Grass Valley, where the records for the now closed church at Smartsville are located, the burial records were destroyed in a fire

1. ↑ He is 27 at the time of the 1850 Census.
2. ↑ The last record that has been found of him is the 1853 list of those Yuba County, California residents eligible for military service.