Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/459

340 Nathaniel, who was born in 1631. In 1668 Nathan Bradley owned two acres of the "Great Lots," and in 1680 he was sexton of the town of Dorchester. His duties as sexton were to "ring the bell, cleanse the meeting-house, and carry water for baptism." While the bell stood on the hill, he was to have "£4 a year and after the bell is brought to the meeting house, £3 10s." He died July 26, 1701. By his wife Mary, daughter of Richard Evans, of Dorchester, he had six children, his eldest son being Nathan, born March 12, 1674-5. Samuel, son of Nathan Bradley by his second wife, Lydia, spelled his name Bradlee. He was a weaver and fisherman. He married Mary Andrus, February 11, 1730, and in 1753 removed from Dorchester to Boston.

To Samuel and Mary (Andrus) Bradlee was born December 24, 1740, a daughter, Sarah, the subject of this sketch. In 1767 Sarah Bradlee married John Fulton, of Boston, son of John Fulton and his wife, Ann Wire (or Weir). They had ten children, the third of whom was Ann Weir, the tenth Elizabeth Scott. Of the other eight the following is a brief record: Sarah Lloyd married Nathan Wait, of Medford; John Andrus, whose first wife was Mehetabel Owen, and his second, Harriet, resided in New London, Conn.; Mary died young; Lydia married John Bannister, of Boston; Frances Burns married Thomas Tilden, of Boston; Mary (second) married David Cushing, and resided in Hull, Mass.; Samuel Bradlee married Mary Barron, of Boston; Lucretia Butler married Samuel Smallidge, and resided in East Cambridge, Mass.

A sketch of Sarah Bradlee Fulton, written by Miss Helen T. Wild, Regent of the chapter bearing her name, was read at one of its meetings. It has been published in the American Monthly Magazine, Washington, D.C., and in the Medford Historical Register. It is an interesting story of her patriotic services, and is herewith reprinted:—

"The names of the men who fought in the war of the American Revolution are carefully preserved in the archives of the State, but the women who through all those sad years endured hardship and loss, and who toiled at the spinning-wheel and in the hospitals for their country's cause, have long ago been forgotten. Only here and there a woman's name is found on the roll of honor of Revolutionary days.

"Among the Medford women whom history has remembered, Sarah Bradlee Fulton has a prominent place. We have been proud to name our chapter for her, honoring with her all the unknown loyal women who worked in this dear old town of ours for the cause of liberty.

"Mrs. Fulton was a member of the Bradlee family of Dorchester and Boston. In 1767 she married John Fulton, and ten years later they came to Medford with their little sons and daughters, and made their home on the east side of Main Street, about one hundred and fifty feet south of the bridge, on the south side of what is now Tufts Place. Her brother, Nathaniel Bradlee, lived in Boston, at the corner of Tremont and Hollis Streets. His carpenter's shop and his kitchen, on Saturday nights, when friends and neighbors gathered to enjoy his codfish suppers, were meeting-places for Boston's most devoted patriots. From this shop a detachment of Mohawks who 'turned Boston Harlior into a teapot' went forth on their work of destruction. In the kitchen Mrs. Bradlee and Mrs. Fulton disguised the master of the house and several of his comrades, and later heated water in the great copper boiler, and provided all that was needful to transform these Indians into respectable Bostonians. Nathaniel Bradlee's principles were well known; and a spy, hoping to find some proof against him, peered in at the kitchen window, but saw these two women moving about so quietly and naturally that he passed on, little dreaming what was really in progress there.

"A year and a half later Sarah Fulton heard the alarm of Paul Revere as he 'crossed the bridge into Medford town,' and a few days after the place became the headquarters of General Stark's New Hampshire regiment. Then came the battle of Bunker Hill. All