Bradford

Bradford is at the intersection of Farm Road 837 and State Highway 19, eighteen miles northwest of Palestine in northwestern Anderson County. The community was settled about 1879, and the Bradford post office, probably named for the first postmaster, B. L. Bradford, operated from 1882 to 1907. In 1884 the community had an estimated population of 150, a Presbyterian church, a district school, a general store, and steam cotton gins-gristmills. Bradford reached a peak estimated population of 200 in 1896, and in the early 1900s J. B. and D. D. Hanks established a sawmill and gin there. The community began to decline soon thereafter. In 1900 it had 125 inhabitants, and by 1933 its population had fallen to about twenty. In the 1930s Bradford had a factory, one additional business, and a number of dwellings scattered along the road. In the mid-1940s the population of the community was estimated at fifty. The population had declined to twenty-five by 1949 and from 1974 to 1990 was estimated at twenty-two. In 1985 Bradford had a business, a cemetery, and several homes. In 2000 the population was thirty.