A motel, a bowling alley, a dairy, an Amtrak train, a conservative think tank, and many more organizations in Vermont operate under the name of Ethan Allen. They believe his name recognition and cachet will promote their activity. Most Vermonters like to identify with some of his exploits. Well versed students of Vermont history know Allen met the love of his life at the home of Stephen R. Bradley. In 1784, after a whirlwind courtship, Allen married Fanny Montresor, an attractive young widow, and after three years moved her to his new homestead in the Intervale along the Winooski River in Burlington. The very few of those who have also read Allen’s correspondence will know that he regularly retained Bradley’s legal services, particularly for real estate transactions.

But who in Vermont would now name an enterprise after Stephen R. Bradley, much less even recognize the name? Virtually no one knows this man prominent in achieving Vermont independence, a central player in making Vermont the 14th state, one of the first two men to represent Vermont in the U.S. Senate, and a key figure in national affairs as Senator during Thomas Jefferson’s administrations (1801-09) and James Madison’s first term (1809-13).

Bradley sponsored the bill that established the American flag after the number of states made the “Betsy Ross” circle of white stars in the blue field impractical.

Bradley has largely flown under the radar of knowledgeable historians of Vermont writing in the last eighty years. The recent, excellent, and comprehensive one-volume history of Vermont, Freedom and Unity (2004) contains only a single Index reference to Bradley. The quarter of a page he receives in The Vermont Encyclopedia (2003) strangely deems his presiding over the nomination of James Madison as the Jeffersonian Republican candidate for President out of character for Bradley, one of the party’s leaders. National histories and the major biographies of Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton have paid Bradley even less attention. Dumas Malone’s standard six-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, with a volume devoted to each of his two terms as President, entirely omits Bradley, as does Vermonter Willard Sterne Randall’s one-volume treatment of Jefferson. Madison biographers and historians of the Early Republic do little better and almost never refer to him. Some contemporaries deemed him “the ablest man in the state.” Why did Bradley, now almost entirely forgotten, deserve that accolade?

Born in Wallingford, Connecticut in February 1754, Bradley studied at Yale College, earning a BA in 1775 and a MA three years later. As a precocious undergraduate, he complied and published an almanac printed in November 1774 in an edition of 2,000. As he worked toward the MA, he became a captain in the Cheshire Volunteers, attached for a time to the Continental Army in New York City. He served as an aide-de-camp to Gen. David Wooster who fell at Danbury in April 1777. In 1778-79, Bradley held a commission as a major, and he also studied law with the renowned mentor, Tapping Reeve of Litchfield, Connecticut.

In May 1779 Bradley made his first public appearance in Vermont. He went before the Superior Court sitting in Westminster, and he received an appointment as clerk of the court and a license to practice law, making him one of the first two attorneys recognized by the young state. In 1780, he became the States Attorney for Cumberland County, the predecessor of Windham County. That year he intervened in a fist fight over political differences that broke out in his Westminster law office. Nathaniel Chipman, later Chief Justice of Vermont, and Matthew Lyon, the Irish firebrand who married Governor Thomas Chittenden’s daughter, identified with the Ira and Ethan Allen, and served in the U.S. Congress from both Vermont and, later, Kentucky would never resolve their differences. Bradley, characteristically, would manage to get along with both men.

Chittenden, the Allens, and the others who fought Vermont’s enemies in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and within the Green Mountain State itself turned to Bradley for help. In December 1779 he read before the Vermont Council meeting at Chittenden’s house in Arlington and then published his lengthy essay, Vermont’s Appeal to the Candid and Impartial World. In it he argued forcefully and logically that Vermont had a “natural right to independence” and recognition by the Continental Congress. Vermont named Bradley, along with Ira Allen, a Commissioner to appear on behalf of the state before Congress, and he made two trips to Philadelphia in that capacity.

In the 1780s in Westminster he served as a selectman and town clerk, and he represented the town at seven sessions of the General Assembly, presiding as its Speaker for one of those terms. In Windham County, at various times, he held the offices of registrar of probate and judge and side judge of the county court. For one year he served as a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court. He also sat as a delegate to the Vermont Constitutional Convention of 1791.

An even-handed, principled, and somewhat self-effacing lawyer, apparently more inclined to resolve issues than to litigate, Bradley, though he held strong opinions, managed to work with diverse groups. In 1779, as a lieutenant in the Vermont militia (he rose to the rank of colonel), he participated in the efforts to subdue Yorker adherents who resisted Vermont independence. When Ethan Allen captured and jailed forty of these pro-Yorkers, Bradley accepted the appointment to defend them. He succeeded to such an extent that Ethan Allen, in full military regalia including his sword, attempted to intimidate the court declaring “Fifty miles I have come through the woods with my brave men, to support the civil with the military arm . . . and to aid the sheriff and the court in prosecuting these Yorkers—the enemies of our noble State. I see that some of them by the quirks of this artful lawyer, Bradley, are escaping from the punishment they so richly deserve.” He warned the judge and abruptly stomped out of the court, and, undaunted, Bradley continued for the defense. Allen approved of the artful attorney when he retained him to work on his behalf.

Despite the opposition of Chittenden and Ira Allen, Bradley became a leader of the Vermonters who worked to resolve the long standing dispute with New York and allow Vermont to enter the Union as the fourteenth state in 1791. Elected as a member of Vermont’s first delegation to the U.S Senate, drawing the four-year term, he served until 1795. With Jefferson’s election as president in 1800 and his party’s victory in the Vermont legislature, Bradley returned to the U.S Senate, taking his seat in 1801. He completed two full terms before retiring in 1813.

Bradley became a leader of the Senate, serving as President pro tempore in 1802-03 and again from `1807 through 1813. He wrote the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that required separate elections for the President and Vice President and ended the possibility of a tie in electoral votes that created the week long Jefferson-Burr stalemate that vexed the election of 1800. He sponsored the bill that established the American flag after the number of states made the “Betsy Ross” circle of white stars in the blue field impractical. As a staunch Jeffersonian Republican, he also organized the first system to choose a party’s presidential nominee.

Prior to the election of 1804, presidential hopefuls formed loose regional and, sometimes, national alliances that produced dysfunctional results of rivals holding the top offices. Jefferson, Adams’s opponent, became his Vice President in 1796, and in 1800 Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s opponent, became his Vice President. Bradley’s Twelfth Amendment resolved that problem, but it did nothing to manage rivalries within a party. As 1804 approached, New Yorkers and other northern Republicans began to tout Governor George Clinton as a standard bearer to contest Jefferson.

In response, Bradley organized a meeting of Congressional Republicans who supported Jefferson. The meeting announced support for the Jefferson-Clinton ticket which prevailed in 1804. Four years later as President pro tempore of the Senate, Bradley “in pursuance of the powers vested in me” called a “convention of said republican members of both houses of congress . . . for the purpose of nominating suitable and proper characters for president and vice-president of the United States.” A staunch supporter of James Madison, Bradley attempted to head off the candidacies of James Monroe, supported by southerners, and Clinton, touted by New Yorkers and other northerners. Many members refused to attend, resisting “the midnight intrigues of any set of men who may arrogate to themselves the right . . . of selecting persons to fill the important offices.” With only one member from New York attending, the “convention” selected Madison.

Bradley had initiated first presidential selection conventions.

Despite his general support for Madison, Bradley, like many New Englanders opposed the War of 1812. He did not stand for re-election to the Senate and gracefully retired from public life in 1813. In 1818 he moved across the Connecticut River to Walpole, New Hampshire where he lived until his death in 1830.

From the American Revolution and the independence of Vermont until the War of 1812, Stephen R. Bradley participated, often as a leader, in most of the major events. Few Vermonters have achieved a career of such distinction.

Amtrak would not consider renaming the “Vermonter,” which travels trough Bradley’s last home town, the “Bradley Express.” They have not heard of him, even if they could label the train an “express.”

H. Nicholas Muller III became familiar with Stephen R. Bradley when he accepted an invitation to write a foreword for the recently published Stephen R. Bradley: Letters of a Revolutionary War Patriot and Vermont Senator.