“Dr Brother,

     …Situated as we are here in the woods, surrounded by a population unlike that in which our earlier impressions were set…I do not know that the diversity of taste, and character between a New Englander or 'Yankee' as we are here called and the Pennsylvania population taken in the general is greater than between many other different sections of our country; certainly not so great as between some districts of our widely extended union - yet here are many important particulars in which we disagree. The population of this portion of Penn. is a quiet, orderly and thrifty community. Originating as it has from two leading stocks, the German and the English, it partakes of the characteristics of both. Although this county was taken up and settled by English people and that character had predominated till 20 years since, it is now doubtful if the German is not getting the ascendancy. Since the last war large immigrations have taken place into it from Lancaster County, the great German hive and the largest of the agricultural counties of the State. With these accessions of numbers are acquired gradually the German tastes and notions particularly among the agricultural portion of the population. If we could incorporate (I speak as a Yankee) a little of New England intelligence and enterprise upon the German honesty and thrift I think we should make an excellent cross.

The most objectionable trait in the German character is their entire indifference or absolute hostility to a system of public education. An opportunity of testing the strength and extent of this feeling has been afforded in the attempt to introduce a new School system by law. A public fund has been created by the State in aid of a system rf free schools, the State has been divided into large school districts generally consisting of counties and some time of more than one county - delegates chosen in the several townships composing a school district have been assembled in Conventions under the Law to decide whether the district shall be taxed to twice the amount of the bounty from the School fund receivable from the State on that condition.

In most of the great school districts the "School Conventions" have concurrently legislated, I should say, and adopted the new law. The legislature in framing this School Law dared not make it imperative but so formed it as to be optional but created the strongest motive in any district to its adoption by appropriating the funds refused to others who would accept them and comply with the Condition of the Law. This appeal was most palpably to the selfish principles of the enemies of a liberal school system and under the circumstances a politic one as the event has proved for the system has been rejected in a very few districts only. It would seem that there must have been many districts that accepted the Law who were not decidedly in favor of the system and in some sort we may say in self defence, for since the Legislature assembled in Jany, their table has been loaded with petitions for its repeal!

Our present Governor stands committed to the school law and it is most likely that the friends of Muhlenberg will attempt to [?] Wolf down on the School Law as the most popular and successful ground to war upon. Gov. W. is also committed to the extensive and expensive system of internal improvement now in progress and which has saddled Pennsylvania with a debt of 23 Millions of Dollars!  Those improvements are not yet productive and the landholders are beginning to fear the inevitable necessity of a system of direct taxation to meet the payment of the current interest on these immense loans. The Muhlenberg party stand ready to battle on that ground also. Whether M. will be nominated or not depends rather upon the chances of success rather than in any disposition to succumb to the Wolf party. [100?] conventions assembled Thursday last and the Anti-Masonic have nominated Ritner again who was against Wolf at last election.  I have not heard from the other Convention which had commenced the first day in contending about rights to seats. The Wolf party and the Van Buren party stand in the Convention pretty much as the numbers of a Convention in Essex North in 1830 when you were visiting, i.e. its complexion depends on the decision of contested seats. Mr. Wolf is not considered at all friendly to Mr. Van Buren - indeed he is confessedly hostile to him and adheres as yet steadfastly to the same sentiments that animated the whole 'Republican' or Jackson Convention that nominated the General for the last term where Van could not get old George Kremers vote and other prominent Jackson men divided the votes of the Jackson Party. Mr. Wolf sentiments as to Van Buren would be likely to gain him a good support from the Whig party if Muhlenberg is nominated unless the Whigs will calculate on some chance for themselves. But what they will do I do not know or care for I have had nothing to nor mean to have nothing to do with politics having had enough of political contention to satisfy me that a man’s true interest if he studies his own happenings is to let politics alone. The loudest pretenders to patriotism - the hungriest office seekers and most zealous demagogues carry all before them when party spirit prevails. Our institutions I consider as shamefully perverted - the press and prostituted and a miserable partisan feeling got up as a substitute for that intelligent attachment to constitutional principles that ought to characterize every free men desirous of perpetuating the liberties of our country.

Having thus expended more of my sheet upon an inhospitable topic - the politics of Pennsylvania - to all elsewhere a sort of labyrinth, I come to speak of my own matters of which you know I am usually fond of talking. I came here in April 1834 and have taken half of this furnace as a partner of the concern of T. Chambers & Co. I adopted the policy of locating myself at this furnace as materially furthering the success of the business in which I am associated with  Br.John at NPort. Last year nearly all the produce of this furnace which is over 400 tons of Stoves passed through the hands of [?]. Shortly after I came here we lost the former manager of the concern and greatest care and labor was in consequence thrown upon me. I had a severe and arduous summer engagement but succeeded satisfactorily to the finishing of the year’s work or blast as we call it.

This furnace is a blast furnace, i.e. a furnace for… [words missing]… business consists in raising the ore, preparing the charcoal, smelting the iron and casting it into Stoves. So that the Stoves are created entirely out of Labour, the ore being worthless under ground and the wood almost so upon the ground. We employ from 100 to 200 hands mostly men. We consume in a year 10,000 cords of woods (Yellow pine principally) and 2000 tons of ore making about 400 tons of Stoves and 200 tons of Pig iron. The latter we expect to make into castings the coming year at a foundry or Cupola furnace we erected further up our stream last summer.

Our situation is upon the N.W. slope of a range of mountains coming out of Virginia and forming a branch from the Blue Ridge. The valley we overlook is bounded by a corresponding ridge or range of Mountains and is about from 10 to 20 miles wide. That extends from the Potomac on the South, to the Susquehanna on the north about 80 miles. (Williamsport - Hagerstown - Greencaslte - Chambersburg - Shippensburg - and Harrisburg all lie through this valley in the order I have placed them from South to North…”

    This closely written letter is interesting in itself as a narrative of rural Pennsylvania culture and state politics in the Jacksonian era, but it is doubly so in light of the uncommon career of its writer – from silversmith to blast furnace manager to eminent politician, albeit one who here writes here that “a man’s true interest is to let politics alone.”

Ebenezer Bradbury was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1793.  When he was 14, he became apprentice to his silversmith father, promoted at 21 to junior partner of the firm of Theophilus Bradbury & Son, which offered “soup, sauce and cream ladles, table and teaspoons, sugar basins, tea pots, cream pots and pitchers”, all of their own manufacture. Other than his 1815 marriage to Nancy Morrill –probably some relation of the recipient of this letter – her death in 1832, and his remarrying just seven months later, almost nothing is known of his early life, when he gave up the silver trade, and, as he writes here, emigrated for three years to the Pennsylvania woods as partner in a Southampton Furnace company.  That partnership was dissolved in March 1837. Three months later, there are news reports of his proposing a patriotic toast at a Shippensburg 4^th of July dinner. That may have been Bradbury’s entry into the political world which he so disdained in this letter.  Four years later, he was back in Newburyport, sporting the military rank of “Major” and leading a procession in memory of President William Henry Harrison, who had died shortly after his Inauguration. By then, Bradbury had made a firm commitment to a political career as a Whig candidate for the Massachusetts State Senate, the beginning of a decade of legislative service. In 1847, he was elected Speaker of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives, and in 1849, state Treasurer of Massachusetts, remaining in office until the was defeated for reelection by a Democrat in 1851.  At the same time, he maintained his business interests, evidenced by an account book, now held by the Phillips Library of the Essex Museum, which recorded expenses connected with a gold claim during the California Gold Rush. Appointed a “Land Agent” by the Governor in 1854, he was not publicly heard of again until his death during the Civil War.