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Few people in the history of this country have had as profound an
impact on an institution of higher education and on a city as did Mrs.
Lydia Moss Bradley at the turn of the century. This extraordinary woman
created what is now Bradley University and helped build the city of
Peoria. Her life and career provide lasting proof that one person can
make a big difference in this world, for her contributions have
positively impacted the lives of thousands of people through the
generations. (The following has been adapted from A Proud Heritage: Bradley's History 1897-1972 by Louis A. R. Yates.)
A most remarkable, courageous, and able woman was Mrs. Lydia Moss Bradley, the founder of Bradley Polytechnic Institute. From 1896, when the state charter for its establishment was granted, to its evolution into a full four-year college, and then in 1946, just a half-century after the issuance of the original charter, the transformation into Bradley University, we see the determination with which Mrs. Bradley laid the foundations for the school.
Lydia Moss was born July 31, 1816, in Vevay, Indiana. Her father, Zeally Moss, was a Baptist minister and had been a Captain in the Colonial Wars. There were five children in the Moss family. Educational facilities were quite limited, and Lydia Moss received only a rudimentary education at a log schoolhouse.
On May 11, 1837, in Vevay, Indiana, Lydia Moss was married to Tobias Smith Bradley. Reportedly, Mrs. Bradley did not want to move to Kentucky, where Tobias' parents lived, because it was a slave-holding state. So they moved to Peoria, Illinois, in 1847, when the place was hardly more than a struggling village, making it their permanent home.
In Peoria, the Bradleys embarked on a business career. William S. Moss, Mrs. Bradley's brother, was in the distilling business, and they joined him in this venture. They also had financial interests in a sawmill, railroad building, and the operation of a steamboat on the Illinois River. They bought farmland and developed real estate. Banking was one of their interests, too. Tobias Bradley was one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Peoria and he served as its first president. Later, Mrs. Bradley served on the Board of Directors for the bank at a time when it was a rarity for women to be bank directors.
When Tobias Bradley was fatally injured on May 4, 1867, in a tragic accident involving a runaway horse and an overturned vehicle, he left his widow, Lydia Moss Bradley, a substantial estate of over seven hundred acres of valuable land and other assets. As there was no will, Mrs. Bradley was suddenly confronted with the sole concern and responsibility for managing an estate valued at over half a million dollars. Her stewardship, common sense, financial acumen, and hard work resulted in the fact that at the time of her death in 1908 her estate was estimated to be worth more than $2 million, and very possibly may have been worth nearly double that amount.
As bereaved parents who had seen all of their ambitions, hopes, and dreams for their six children end with their children's deaths, they had devoted much time, thought, and discussion to how their wealth might be used as a fitting memorial to their offspring. Their ideas revolved about the idea of founding, upon their deaths, an educational institution of a general character, oriented to the teaching of young people. They would be instructed in the arts and skills of becoming useful, productive, upright, self-supporting citizens.
After the death of Tobias, Mrs. Bradley, now alone and saddened, devoted herself unreservedly to achieving their goal.
She traveled much. On her visit to Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1877, she was so deeply impressed that in many ways it became the model of the institute she later built in Peoria. She personally investigated the best polytechnic schools and manual training departments in the nation. With her strong mind she readily grasped the significance of details that suggested further study was needed. Mrs. Bradley knew the value of money. She understood the need to safeguard an endowment against as many foreseeable contingencies as it was possible for her to predict. More and more she was fascinated by the idea of providing a school for boys and girls to enable them to learn a skill or trade.
In the ten years 1885-1895 Lydia had a deepening of interest and renewal of determination to achieve the goals she had in mind for a memorial to her beloved Tobias and their children. She sent Mr. W. W. Hammond, her trusted business agent since 1884 and a close personal counselor, as her personal agent to investigate the Throup Institute in Pasadena, California, and President Woodward's Washington School for Boys in St. Louis, Missouri, and to attend the National Educational Convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1895. By corresponding with such schools as the Case School of Applied Science, Rose Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Louisville High School in Kentucky, Mrs. Bradley obtained pertinent information about costs of maintenance; operating expenses; floor plans; the nature, amount, and types of equipment needed; endowment incomes; salaries; courses of instruction; and other data.
The superintendent of Peoria's public schools suggested that Mrs. Bradley should confer with the president of the University of Chicago, Dr. William Rainey Harper, who was interested in manual training from an educator's viewpoint. In their first meeting, Dr. Harper realized the advanced state of Mrs. Bradley's plans and the maturity of her decisions, and the need for just one significant change: He strongly urged her to establish her "memorial school or institute" in her lifetime and to perfect its endowment in her remaining years. With renewed vigor and a quickened step, Mrs. Bradley eagerly agreed to the new plan of action.
At the first meeting of the Board of Trustees, which was held at Mrs. Lydia Bradley's home at 122 Moss Avenue, Peoria, on November 16, 1896, the Charter for the Corporation was received and duly accepted, by-laws were formulated and adopted, and officers of the Board of Trustees were elected.
It was a hot and dusty April 10, 1897, when ground was broken for Bradley Hall. What had been a prairie-land cornfield was being transformed into a seat of learning.
Founder's Day was October 8, 1897, a day for formally dedicating the realized dream of Mrs. Bradley for a living memorial for Tobias and the children. There was much excitement in Peoria and notice of the event attracted widespread interest in educational circles throughout the state and elsewhere. Educators came by the hundreds. A special train carried many dignitaries from Chicago, Evanston, and other cities.
It is said that only those who were there at the dedication exercises can understand and appreciate the thrill of excitement and the surge of emotions that were created by this spectacle of high drama. With great dignity, and no doubt deep emotion, Mrs. Lydia Moss Bradley, then past her eighty-first year, presented the keys to the new building to the President of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Oliver J. Bailey. Her voice was low and tremulous but compelling in its tenor as she briefly charged the Trustees with full responsibility for the course of action upon which the Institute would now enter.
October 8, 1897, was indeed the day Bradley Polytechnic Institute became a viable symbol, visible to all, of the love and respect of Lydia Moss Bradley "for Tobias and the children."