1. Phineas Bradley (1769–1845), born in Litchfield, Connecticut, was a practicing physician before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1801, where he found employment as principal clerk in the General Post Office, in which his brother Abraham was assistant postmaster general. By 1828 Bradley was second assistant postmaster general in charge of mail contracts. He was dismissed during the Jacksonian purge of political offices in 1829 (Daily National Intelligencer, 1 and 7 Mar. 1845; Charles S. Bradley, “The Bradley Family and the Times in Which They Lived,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 6 [1903]: 134; ASP description begins American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States.… (38 vols.; Washington, 1832–61). description ends , Miscellaneous, 2:311; Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse [Cambridge, Mass., 1995], 71, 221–23).