My Genealogy Hound

CORNELIUS G. BRADSHAW, Bloomington; was born in Shelby Co., Kentucky, on the 26th day of May, 1839. Quite early in life, he came with his parents to Southern Illinois, and passed the years of his boyhood on a farm; in his fourteenth or fifteenth year, he began a course of study at Georgetown, Ill.; soon after he was admitted to the Indiana Asbury College, located at Greencastle. Mr. Bradshaw finished his education by taking a law course at Ann Arbor, Mich.; he went direct from his books to the practice of law. The first case of any note in which he figured, was a suit at Charleston, Coles Co., Ill., which was a prosecution brought under the old fugitive slave law, against a colored woman, named Mary Brown; he was counsel for the defendant, and succeeded in securing his client’s acquittal. When the war broke out, Mr. Bradshaw was President of Marshall College, but resigned his duties as instructor to become a soldier; he experienced active service as a Captain of cavalry, and several times received honorable mention in the reports—see war record. After the war he located in Bloomington, where he has since resided. He has, during these latter years, practiced law with gratifying success. His position as senior counsel in the celebrated Roach case, being a responsible one. It was in the defense of the notorious desperado Rande, however, that Mr. Bradshaw’s great originality was brought conspicuously into play; he made one of the most learned, striking and original appeals that was ever addressed to any jury; extracts from this effort were telegraphed to all the leading papers of the country.