Collect Day #28 CAESAR BRADISH
Thanks be to you, O God, who calls us to be builders of welcoming communities, we remember today Caesar Bradish and his wife who welcomed many into their home; we pray that we may remember and never forget the spirits of all those who preceded us, both slave and free, who have shaped the communities in which we now live; through Jesus Christ our Lord who knows us each by name. Amen.
DAY #28, April 6, 2019
HENNIKER, NH
CAESAR BRADISH (? -1808)
Edith Butler
Caesar Bradish, his wife (whose name has been lost through time), and his two children came to Henniker, NH in the late 1700s or early 1800s. Bradish, unusual for this time, traveled as a free Black man, a landowner, and head of his own household.
He was a blacksmith living in Litchfield, NH when, in 1788, he bought a bit of land in Nottingham West [Hudson], NH. He sold it in 1795 and moved to Henniker.
The 1790 census reports Caesar in Nottingham West, NH as head of a family of six, “all black.” But the census of 1800 notes him living in Henniker as head of a family of three, “all black.” It is unknown where the other three members of the family went or who they were. Caesar and his wife, their son William, who served three years as a waiter in the War of 1812 in the Massachusetts Militia, and their daughter Nabby are among the earliest of free Black settlers in Henniker.
In Henniker, the Bradish family lived near the site of the stone house below the lower mills, and, for a time, between the Ray place and Long Pond, close to a large boulder which is known locally as Bradish Rock.
Caesar was part of what appears to have been a stable African community, which consisted of both free and enslaved Blacks. The Bradish family’s path often crossed with other African Americans who traveled through the area. One notable traveler with whom the family grew close was a young man named Nero Prince, who was a founding member of the nation’s first Black Masonic lodge and also served in the czar’s court in Russia.
Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, Nero lived for a time in the Bradish household and married Nabby. He later deserted her because of, according to some reports, what he claimed were her “intemperate habits.”
Caesar Bradish died in his Henniker home in 1808. There is evidence that his surviving children may have moved to Warner, NH, the town adjacent to Henniker.
