Abraham Bradley, Jr.

Who was Abraham Bradley, Jr.?

Abraham Bradley, Jr. was an American lawyer, judge, and cartographer who was assistant postmaster general for 30 years during the earliest history of the United States Post Office Department. Bradley was responsible for moving the federal government's post office from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to the new capital at Washington, D.C., hosting the national post office in his own home for a period. The continuity brought by Bradley's long employment during the tenure of five different United States postmasters general helped establish the budding postal service as a reliable provider; Bradley drew detailed and innovative postal route maps which contributed significantly to the office's efficiency. Bradley's original work of 1796 was one of the first comprehensive maps of the United States as it existed, which "represented the first clear cartographic break in European-dominated map making and introduced a new, more distinctly American style of cartography to the United States."