but his connection with the public schools of this city. His money, made
by anxious care in his warehouse and among business men, was freely spent
to promote the cause of education, and the labor, solicitude and anxiety
with which he prosecuted his business, great as they necessarily were,
must be counted small compared with his sacrifices of time and labor in
the effort to extend and improve the school system and make the school
houses of the city a source of gratulation and pride to the citizens. But
whilst his hardest labor was in the service of the schools, it was purely
a labor of love, whilst his work on the river was a labor of business, and
therefore he must, in this record of Cleveland's noted men, take rank
among his commercial brethren.

Mr. Bradburn was born at Attleborough, Massachusetts, July 16th, 1808. His
father was a cotton manufacturer when that great industrial interest was
in its infancy. The first manufacture in this country of several articles
of twilled fabrics was in his factory.

At the age of seven years Charles Bradburn had the misfortune to lose his
mother, a lady highly esteemed by all who knew her. This loss was a
serious one, as it left him almost entirely to his own resources. When
sixteen years old he entered the Lowell machine shop as an apprentice, and
after a service of three years, graduated with a diploma from the
Middlesex Mechanics Association. He served as a journeyman for two years,
when, feeling that his education was not adequate to his wants, he left
the mechanic's bench for the student's desk, entering the classical school
of Professor Coffin at Ashfield, in the western part of the same State.
Subsequently he resumed his mechanical labors, which he continued until
1833, part of the time as a journeyman, but during the greater part as a
manufacturer on his own account. At that date he changed his business from
manufacturing to commerce, opening a store in Lowell.