Captain George W. Bradley, A.Q.M., and the Bradley Base Ball Clubs

George W. Bradley served as a quartermaster for the New York Volunteers during the US Civil War. After the war, he became an assistant quartermaster (A.Q.M.) in the regular army with the rank of captain. Captain Bradley served at several posts, mostly in the West. While serving at Fort Harker, Kansas in 1867 and at Fort Union, New Mexico in 1868, teams from the forts organized teams they named the Bradley Base Ball Club (BBC). In Kansas, the Bradley BBC defeated the Smoky Hill BBC from Ellsworth, but in New Mexico, they lost to the Santa Fe BBC in a game played at Las Vegas. The contest in Las Vegas is currently the earliest documented game played by two clubs from distant localities in New Mexico. Captain Bradley was transferred to Philadelphia in 1880, where he passed away in 1882 at age 51. During the early 1890s, his daughter, Kate Mickles Bradley, lived in Omaha, Nebraska and Ottawa, Kansas. In 1896, she and her mother, Agnes, moved back to Washington, DC. In Washington, Kate became well known as a professional art model and a teacher and performer of the Delsarte method of expression, which influenced acting and modern dance. Agnes and Kate both passed away in New York in 1920 and were buried with George in Arlington National Cemetery.