Alexander Blackburn Bradford

Alexander Blackburn Bradford (June 2, 1799 – July 10, 1873) The life of Alexander Blackburn Bradford saw his conspicuous participation in the early affairs of two Southern states, a distinguished career as a lawyer and elected politician, a skilled military commander in two wars of the 19th Century, and an appointment to the Provisional Confederate Congress at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was born in 1799 in Jefferson County, Tennessee, the son of East Tennessee pioneers and grandson of two Revolutionary War veterans. After studying law at the University of Tennessee, he served as a senate clerk under James K. Polk in the Thirteenth General Assembly of Tennessee. He was only twenty years old at the time.

In 1821 Bradford moved to Jackson, Tennessee becoming one of its first settlers. On November 14 of that year he was admitted to the bar of the first Circuit Court of Madison County. He was soon thereafter named first district attorney, at the time called solicitor general, for the Western District of Tennessee. In 1834 Bradford served as one of two prosecuting attorneys in the trial of John A. Murrell, one of the most notorious criminals of the early South. In 1821 Bradford married Darthula Miller, the daughter of Chancellor Pleasant Miller and granddaughter of Governor William Blount. One of Bradford’s three daughters, named for her mother, married Captain Henry E. Williamson, CSA.