BRADFORD-L Archives

From: George McSwain <>
Subject: [BRADFORD-L] from Ancestry Daily News
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 14:07:22 -0400

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Midwest Pioneers: Memoirs of Mary Bradford

Born in the farming community of Paris, Kenosha County, in 1856, Mary
Davison Bradford was forced by her father's ill health to begin teaching at
the age of sixteen--before she had finished high school. She continued to
work actively as an educator until 1922. Bradford describes how she taught
in small rural schools, in the expanding Kenosha system, and at centers of
educational experimentation such as Central State Teachers College at
Stevens Point and the Stout Training School at Menomonie. Eventually
appointed superintendent of schools in Kenosha, Bradford instituted
kindergarten, vocational training programs, breakfast programs for needy
children, and politically independent procurement and hiring processes. She
also advocated courses in citizenship and health education. Bradford's
autobiography chronicles the development of Wisconsin's public school
system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wisconsin had
a strong commitment to primary, secondary, and higher public education in
this era, and Bradford's work reflects at the grassroots level many of the
pedagogic reforms then sweeping the country.

Bibliography: Library of Congress. "Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books
from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910." [Database online]
Washington: Library of Congress, 1999. Bradford, Mary Davison. "Memoirs of
Mary Davidson Bradford." Evansville, WI: Antes Press, 1932.

To search this database, go to:
http://www.ancestry.com/ancestry/search/3889.htm
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• [BRADFORD-L] from Ancestry Daily News by George McSwain <>