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Clement Adams Bradbury was born March 18, 1819, in York County, Maine, at a point some thirty miles west of Portland. He was of rugged Yankee stock, and distantly related to the Bradbury s, of reputation in American science and music. His parents, however, were not in affluent circumstances, and in order to better their condition, became pioneers of Aroostook County, far up the coast, near the border, in the pine forest belt. It is interesting to notice that forty years after leaving that section, Mr. Bradbury, upon revisiting his old home, found the fields which he had ploughed reforested with vigorous young pines.

From the age of thirteen until twenty-five the young down-easter lived in the woods, becoming expert in the use of an axe, and priding himself equally upon his ability to swing the scythe, for every settler must have besides his timber lot, his field of hay. In consequence of his early training and labor he grew up tall and strong. He became a logger and lumberman, and naturally might have remained contented with life in the Pine Tree State; but the stories promulgated about Oregon penetrated even into the depths of the Aroostook woods. Young Bradbury felt their influence and attraction, and formed in his imagination vivid pictures of the Columbia River; which, moreover, were so accurately drawn in his mind that when he once saw the stream some years later they made the actual vision seem like a fulfillment of his day dreams. He finally got news that there was a ship at Bangor fitting out for the Pacific Coast, and went down to secure some sort of a passage; but, being disappointed, returned home with the conclusion that the Oregon fever was simply a disorder of which he must cure himself.