James Bradley

I was born shortly before 27 August 1843 in Carnaross, County Meath, Ireland to John Bradley and Rose Heeney and my baptism is recorded in the Catholic parish records there. The potato famine hit my family when I was but 2. I had several brothers and sisters born before and after I was. I knew some of them as they lived to adulthood and had families.

I left Carnaross and moved a short distance away from my family to work on the manor grounds of Sylvan Park which was between Carnaross and Kells in County Meath, Ireland. While working there I met Margaret Higgins. She was working at a neighboring manor. We married in the Kilskyre Parish Church the 30th of January 1864 as it was the Catholic Church for us to attend from the manors where we were working. We left Ireland a short time after that for the United States. We arrived on 2 May 1864 in New York City on the ship Harvest Queen.

We settled first in Westen, Jackson County, Missouri which is outside of Kansas City. In the 1870 United States Census we were counted there with our daughter Mary. Our first three children Mary, John, and Rose were born there. They were baptized in the Holy Trinity Catholic Church. We had a fourth child, Maggie in Texas.

We moved to Texas and were in Bosque and then Dallas Counties. I worked for the City of Dallas for a number of years as an assistant keeper in the parks department. My job was given to a young upstart in 1892 and a councilman asked the council to give me back my job and fire the other person who got the job because he was a friend of someone another council person knew. My job was given back to me.

I was in the Irish-American Club there too. I served as a guard for a while at the club outer door.

I died of what was reported to be a lung hemorrhage 7 November 1902 at 123 Ervay Street in Dallas. The coroner's inquest was done in precinct 1 place 1. The Dallas Morning News had a little blurb about me at my death on 8 November 1902. My body was buried in Old Calvary Cemetery.

Margaret died in 1906. Our children knew of their Irish ancestry. Me being born in County Meath and Margaret in County Westmeath as Margaret's obituary in the Dallas Morning News told of her birth and our immigration to this county shortly after our marriage.

Active links within these pages will

1. take you to another website, to return click your back button in your browser.

2. take you to an image, to return click your back button in your browser

3. open in Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have the Reader installed, go to www.adobe.com and download the reader. It is free.

If you have any questions, comments, additions about this site, please contact us! Click HERE to contact us

Research and website done by Tresa Tatyrek. This site was last updated 03/28/09