Elias L. & Frances E. Bradley Family

Elias L. Bradley (1819-1896) was a very well-known pioneering barber, a devout Christian of St. Luke AME Church, and an honorable Mason who actively engaged with the Lawrence community. His life’s story, as reported in Lawrence newspapers, bears witness to an industrious and conscientious man who cared for others’ needs while practicing his trade over his six decades-long career. Given that his various barber shops served as inter-racial gathering venues for conversations, he well understood the need for calming racial tensions with a clean shave, soothing shampoo, and expertly trimmed haircut.

On August 13, 1820, when Eli was eighteen months old, his white father, Edward Bradley, emancipated him and his younger sister Caroline in Hempstead County, Arkansas, having already freed his enslaved mother, Ann, and his three brothers (Zeb, Dan, and Gad) in 1815 and 1818.¹ In his youth, Eli learned to read and write and apprenticed as a barber for five years, beginning in 1832, writing, “I claim to be inferior to none at the trade.” While living with his mother and sister in Little Rock, Arkansas, by 1850, he plied his trade and bore a child, Julia Agnes, in 1851 with his first wife. Upon learning about the bloody border wars between free staters in Kansas Territory and Missouri’s proslavery guerillas, he came to Lawrence for the first time in 1856, opened a barber shop, and later “shouldered the musket to stand in the defense of our city” during Confederate Gen. Price’s 1864 threatening raid.²

Frances Esther Mumford (1845-1891) (also born in Hempstead County, Arkansas) married Elias Bradley on May 26, 1860 at Fort Scott, Kansas. In 1861, the couple moved with Julia Agnes to Lawrence, where Mrs. Bradley would raise their eight children and Mr. Bradley would resume barbering.³ Upon opening “a bathing establishment” downtown on Massachusetts Street “for the benefit of all who may patronize him,” he pointed out the following: “Gentlemen, I have been almost disheartened in my adventure of opening business among you. I was told in the South that the Northern people would not patronize me much—that I would starve—that I would find out that the Northerners were not friends to the colored man. Now is the chance to prove it to the contrary.”⁴

One year later, when William Quantrill and his Missouri guerillas murdered men and destroyed Lawrence on August 21, 1863, Bradley saw a white man shot and his body thrown into a burning building.⁵ The Bradley family survived but “lost all”—presumably their home, his workplace, and possessions. They received some relief ($12.10 worth of groceries or $286 in today’s dollars) and some clothing.⁶ Two years later, he owned $500 in real estate property and $500 in personal property (worth a total of $18,283 today).⁷ Although he claimed $478 ($11,305) in raid damages, he did not receive sufficient payments, much like the majority of claimants.⁸ Yet surviving the raid became a great source of pride, especially for Black businessmen. With others, Bradley met at Fred W. Read’s store to plan the first reunion of raid survivors at South Park on August 21, 1891, and his name appeared on survivors’ lists through 1895.⁹

After the Lawrence massacre, Bradley’s frequent newspaper advertisements, touting his years of experience, attracted men, women, and children, both Black and white, to his barber shops at different downtown locations on Massachusetts Street.¹⁰ For instance, Major B. S. Henning, a white Union officer and railroad executive, “used to come up from Kansas City to get his hair cut by Bradley. He had become so well suited with the work that barber did in this line, that he would try no one else.”¹¹ After Bradley spent $190 (over $4,000) on three handsome new chairs from Chicago, Rev. David G. Lett and his son Hannibal moved their “Crystal Palace” from Topeka in 1870 to his enlarged and improved stand at 70 Massachusetts, where “his former patrons [could] hardly recognize the place” now “up in such fine style.”¹² At some point, a picture of an old horse, labeled “Blood will tell,” hung in his shop.¹³ Over the course of his extensive career until at least 1890, he “always received a full share of patronage,” along with several Black barbers who partnered or worked with him, including William H. Butler, John M. Mitchell, Mark Anthony, (James?) Stewart, John L. Waller, and James Gross.¹⁴ In 1879, Bradley and Butler “defied any barber or barbers to excel us in shaving or hair-cutting.” Frank Willard, a white barber, accepted their challenge with a bet of $100 and John Mitchell refereed.¹⁵

Given his writing skills, Bradley often served as a secretary for various gatherings. In 1865, he recorded a huge July 4th celebration among Black folks in which soldiers and women, dressed in white representing 35 states, paraded downtown.¹⁶ Together with other civil rights activists, such as Charles H. Langston, he petitioned legislators to strike the word “white” from the Kansas Constitution, to grant suffrage to Black men (regardless of class), and to abolish racial segregation in public places (including barber shops) beginning in 1866.¹⁷ While his peers remained disenfranchised, his name appeared on a list of qualified voters as a freedman in 1868, two years before the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.¹⁸ When rumors spread over two separate racial “outrages” in 1873, Bradley recorded citizens’ denunciations of “unlawful deeds” committed by Black men on white females.¹⁹ Ever conscious of the economic struggles among lower class citizens, he also “determined to do justice to the laboring class and all who may patronize them” by charging only 25¢ ($7.45 today) for a shave and haircut, and 15¢ ($4.50) for children’s haircuts, sometimes reducing his prices to 10¢ ($3.00).²⁰

St. Luke AME Church became his spiritual home, perhaps since its founding in 1862. In addition to religious services, congregants also gathered for “indignation” meetings to protest racial discriminations. For instance, in 1874, citizens and parents vehemently opposed C. B. Mustard, an incompetent white teacher at the Black-segregated Vermont street school where Bradley’s children attended.²¹ Two years later, Bradley and ten other barbers agreed to limit their hours on Sundays from 6:00 to 10:00 a.m., until 1882, when six barbers decided to close on Sundays but operate on Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to midnight.²² In 1879, Bradley also joined a meeting, led by Rev. Richard Ricketts, to protest the city council’s failure to appoint any Black men to positions.²³ For her part, Frances reportedly “professed a hope in Christ in 1885,” one year after Elias retired from St. Luke’s board.²⁴

As a morally upright and sober man, Bradley may have been a charter member of the Far West Lodge No. 5, an all-Black “secret” society of Ancient, Free, and Accepted Masons established in Lawrence in 1866. The following year, on June 24 (St. John’s Day), Capt. William D. Matthews organized the Most Worshipful King Solomon Grand Lodge of the State of Kansas headquartered in Leavenworth. Bradley served as an officer (secretary, treasurer, and trustee) for this state lodge from 1871 through 1885, as well as secretary for Lawrence’s Far West Lodge No. 5 in 1876.²⁵

Beginning in 1889, several tragic deaths occurred in the Bradley family. First, son Elmore, a well-educated 29-year-old man born deaf who loved to fish at the Kansas River, disappeared from the family home in mid-August. (For nine years, Elmore had attended the “Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb” in Olathe—a tuition-free school that offered free room and board to its students.) Twelve days later, Elmore’s body was found 25 miles downriver near DeSoto. By the time Elias had arrived in DeSoto, the coroner had already buried his son in the town’s “Silent Cemetery.”²⁶ One year later, the family also grieved over the passing of “little Wilfrid” (unknown birth year).²⁷

Seven months later, Mrs. Frances Bradley, age 45, died quite suddenly from heart disease at the family home on north Kentucky Street. After her AME funeral, she was buried in Oak Hill’s potter’s field. In his card of thanks, Mr. Bradley wrote:

Please allow me . . . to return heartfelt thanks to our many kind friends for their kind assistance and sincere sympathy towards my bereaved family. Honor to all who have done so much to show their love and respect. Words fail to express my sense of appreciation of those deeds which spoke louder than words. Such expressions will not be unnoticed nor unrewarded by Him who controls the destiny of His creatures; to whom, with much love, I would commend each of you.²⁸

Another seven months passed when Elias’ 25-year-old son Brazil (“Bud” or “Bead”), also a barber downtown, died from tuberculosis. He, too, was buried in potter’s field. The year before, Bud had engaged in an altercation with another Black barber whom he cut severely with a razor. Immediately after this incident, Bud ran to his family’s home, changed out of his bloodied coat, and skipped town for an unknown period of time.²⁹ Then, in February 1893, Elias’ 17-year-old daughter Jennie Bradley died of typhoid pneumonia. Her body was brought from Kansas City and also buried in potter’s field after the funeral.³⁰

Little is known about Bradley’s remaining four children, only that Lawrence H. Bradley (b. 1864) was released from police court for an assault he did not commit.³¹ Mary Bradley (b. 1869) married Ernest Russell on March 23, 1891, in Iowa, a ceremony that Lawrence witnessed.³² No marriage was ever announced about Anna (b. 1871). At age 16, daughter Sarah (b. 1880) was the sole family member living with her father one year before his death.³³

After a very long-lived and highly successful career as a tonsorial artist and entrepreneurial businessman, Elias L. Bradley died at age 77—while still barbering downtown at 5 east 9th Street. Congregants at St. Luke AME Church honored him as “a man of sterling qualities, a Christian whose daily deportment proved his faith was well founded.” His Masonic brothers conducted his AME funeral and led him to his burial place—in potter’s field.³⁴