John Bradley

From the Hyten family archive; subject is John Bradley (1660–1715), a 9× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth in Essex County, Virginia, his marriage to Elizabeth Nomaiden, his daughter Margaret Bradley, his death in Henrico County, and the colonial Virginia context of his life. Notable: colonial Tidewater Virginia roots in the late 17th century.

John Bradley (1660–1715) stands among the earliest forebears recorded in the compiler's paternal-grandfather line, a 9× great-grandparent whose life unfolded entirely within the bounds of colonial Virginia. He was born in 1660 in Essex County, in the Tidewater region of the Virginia colony, during a generation when the English settlements along the Rappahannock and James rivers were still consolidating from frontier outposts into established planter society.

The Virginia of John Bradley's youth was a colony defined by tobacco, by the headright system of land patents, and by the steady expansion of English families inland from the coastal counties. Essex County itself, formed in 1692 from the older Rappahannock County, lay in the heart of this tobacco country, and the late seventeenth century saw the rise of the parish vestry, the county court, and the great planter houses that would shape Virginia's character for generations. The aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 left lasting marks on the political order of the colony during Bradley's formative years.

He married Elizabeth Nomaiden, and from their union came a daughter, Margaret Bradley, born in 1695 and living until 1730. It is through Margaret that the Bradley line passes forward into the compiler's ancestry. Whether other children were born to John and Elizabeth is not preserved in the records available to this archive; only Margaret has come down through the family register.

John Bradley died on 8 February 1715 in Henrico County, Virginia, having evidently removed at some point from his native Essex County to the older settlement along the upper James. Henrico, one of the eight original shires established in 1634, was by Bradley's later years a maturing district that would soon give rise to the town of Richmond.

John Bradley was the compiler's 9× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.