Worth waiting for

On a wintry January day in 1801, Daniel Webster, then a senior at Dartmouth, penned a letter to a chum who had graduated two years earlier and who was studying law in Concord. "Come Friend Bradley," teased Webster in his letter, "lay by your volumes of statutes and reports for a moment and condescend to admit College into your thoughts. Yourself were once a Dartmouthensian resident with us, though the recollection of it may now be buried beneath the accumulated masses of legal maxims and the commonplaces of business."

Apparently that friend, Samuel Ayer Bradley, class of 1799, never forgot his college companion nor his beloved alma mater. Nor has his family forgotten, nearly 185 years later, for Dartmouth recently received a bequest of more than $297,000 from the estate of Minnie Bradley Mattson of Philadelphia and Fryeburg, Maine. A granddaughter of Samuel Bradley's brother Robert, Mrs. Mattson died in 1945, but the unrestricted gift to the College was received only recently due to certain contingency provisions in her will.

According to relatives, Mrs. Mattson made the bequest to the College in recognition of her distant forebear and his lifelong friendship with the famous Webster, who became one of the most influential men in American history, serving in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate and as secretary of state under three presidents. Much is known about the relationship between Bradley and Webster through letters and papers preserved in Dartmouth's archives. The College is nearing completion of a major publication project, The Papers of Daniel Webster, which includes five volumes of his general correspondence and two volumes of his legal papers and will eventually include two volumes of his diplomatic papers.

Webster apparently had admired the elder Bradley when they were both stuents in Hanover, and he tried to explain his feelings in that same letter written in January 1801: "Where two persons are walking up a hill, (Oh, a nice comparison!) the one who precedes can hardly escape the gaze of the other, though he should not deign a look at him."

In the early years, Webster often sought Bradley's advice and help. When Webster's financial difficulties forced the interruption of his law studies after his graduation from Dartmouth in 1801, Bradley helped secure him a temporary teaching post at Fryeburg Academy. Eight years later, Bradley purchased the land where Webster's little one-story schoolhouse had stood and never allowed anyone to build on it during his lifetime. Bradley again assisted Webster in finding employment in 1804, when the latter arrived in Boston without any recommendations or advance inquiries. With Bradley's help, Webster landed an apprentice position with Christopher Gore, then Boston's most prominent lawyer.

Bradley was born into the prosperous family of John and Hannah Bradley of Concord, N.H., on November 22, 1774. In 1794, when he was 19, he moved to Fryeburg, where his father owned land, and spent the summer living in a log cabin and felling trees and clearing land for a permanent settlement. However, by autumn the discomforts of pioneer

life convinced him to return to Concord and to prepare for entrance to Dartmouth the following year. After graduation he read law in Concord and Boston before returning to Fryeburg in 1804 to live with his brother Robert, a farmer and storekeeper. Family connections in and around Fryeburg helped Bradley build up a large law practice quickly, and in 1805, after the organization of Oxford County, he was appointed register of probate, a postion he held for five years. He was a man of great compassion and principles, and it was said that he never accepted a case he considered unjust and often contributed from his own purse to pay the expenses of his clients.

The law was not his first love, though, and he found much to complain about, as he did in a letter to Webster in 1806. "In the space of four months," wrote Bradley, "I have filed nearly twice four writs, defended nearly half as many actions and lost more than half of them, ridden through a barbarous country over hills and sloughs and stumps and stones to attend Probate Court; expended ten dollars, at least, in the journey; and received, as fees, perhaps to the amount of nine dollars, accompanied with much pain to my bones and weariness to the flesh." A dedicated Federalist, he found, as did his friend Webster, that politics were much more to his liking, and from 1813 to 1818 Bradley represented Fryeburg, then part of Massachusetts, in the Bay State's legislature. However, his political views he was a violent opponent of the War of 1812 and of the separation of Maine from Massachusetts finally led him to retire from politics, and in 1825 he moved to Portland, Maine, where he speculated in timber lands and other ventures.

During this time, he still occasionally advised the College on its legal and financial affairs and at times was cosidered indispensable, as indicated in a letter written in 1836 by the Dartmouth president at the time, Nathan Lord, to Samuel Fessenden: "After my return from Portland, I wrote at large to Colonel Bradley in behalf of the College. A favorable consideration of our interests, on his part, would be of great importance to us, and we shall suffer great embarrassment without such aid as we are now seeking from him."

Bradley returned to Fryeburg in 1841 to live out the rest of his days in the home of his brother Robert, and he died there in 1844 at the age of 69.

Looking every inch the intense scientist, epidemiologist John Wennberg displays the computerterminal and printouts which recently led him to some interesting conclusions on patternsof health care use.