Pvt Joseph B Bradburn, CSA

Joseph B. Bradburn was about 1824/1825 in Burke County, NC to Isaac Elledge and Eleanor Starnes Bradburn. He was their third child and was named for his maternal grandfather, Joseph Starnes, who had served in the American Revolution. He was reared on his father's farm near Middle Little River in the section that would become Caldwell County in 1841 and then Alexander County in 1847.

He worked on this father's farm throughout his childhood and early adulthood and he took over the management of his father's farm in the late 1850s. He also served as the Postmaster of the Wittenburg Post Office from May 31, 1848 until it was discontinued on September 23, 1857.

Joseph Bradburn married Nancy Lowdermilk, the daughter of Garner Lowdermilk, about 1855 in Alexander County, NC, and short thereafter began their family. By the 1860 US Federal census they are listed with two sons, Newton C., Walter S., and a daughter, A. C.

When the Civil War began he resisted immediately enlisting in the Army of the Confederacy as his older brother, Thomas Wesley Bradburn, had done. He did however enlist on March 31, 1863 in Catawba County, NC and served as a private in Company E, 32 Regiment, NC Infantry. He served faithfully until he was captured at or near Spotsylvania Courthouse on May 10, 1864. He was immediately sent to the prison camp at Belle Plains, VA, transferred to the camp at Point Lookout, MD on May 18, 1864, and finally imprisoned at Elmira, NY on August 3, 1864. He had made the journey with his first cousin, David A. Starnes, who served in Company C, 18 Regiment, NC Infantry . Joseph Bradburn was paroled on October 11, 1864 and arrived at Venus Point, Savannah River, GA on November 15, 1864. He must have made his way home to his family at this time as he is listed as absent in January and February, 1865.

After the war he spent the rest of his life working on his farm and rearing his family. He died on February 22, 1881 and was probably buried in the cemetery of Antioch Baptist Church, Alexander County, NC. Several years later in 1883 Nancy, his wife, and his oldest son, Newton, took the three younger children, Emma, Wesley and Frances, and moved to Texas and then to the Oklahoma Territory where she died in 1908.