Caldwell Bradshaw

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Caldwell Bradshaw (born December 22, 1853 in Pelham, Tennessee; died January 26, 1925 in Birmingham) was an attorney.

Bradshaw was the 5th of 7 children born to Reverend Joseph Bradshaw and the former Martha Lawrence. He attended the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee and read law in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was first admitted to the bar in 1880. He moved to Birmingham in 1886.

As an attorney, Bradshaw served as the Alabama agent for Austin Corbin's New York-based Corbin Banking Co. and other eastern investment companies. Bradshaw was an early user of the phonograph to dictate correspondence, allowing him to move on to other business while his stenographer transcribed the recordings. He endorsed the machine which he acquired from the Alabama Phonograph Co. as "his cheapest employee".

Bradshaw married to the former Mary Elizabeth "Minnie" Plosser at First Presbyterian Church on April 16, 1890. They resided initially at the Caldwell Hotel, and then in a cottage Bradshaw had moved to a lot he had acquired on Highland Avenue, at what was then Smith's Station in the Town of Highland. They kept house their while the large new house was completed on the same lot. The couple had four daughters and one son, Caldwell Jr, who died in infancy in 1892. The couple spent the summer months at Blount Springs or Monte Sano in Huntsville.

Bradshaw also served as an Alderman for the town and was the sole member of the "committee" appointed to pursue street improvevements. He advised neighbors to install curbings along their street frontage so that the town could install gravel paving and guttering. He also negotiated with the Consolidated Electric Light Company and other companies to furnish street lights for the town, which was annexed into Birmingham in 1893.

In 1892 Bradshaw led a group that was granted a franchise to build a water works system supplied by artesian wells at Gate City. The arrangement was formalized by a contract approved by the Birmingham Board of Aldermen, over the objections of Mayor James Van Hoose, in 1895. The contract called for Bradshaw's group to furnish 5 million gallons per day beginning on or before March 1, 1897, and for the city to have the right to purchase the plant for its appraised value after five years. In October 1897 the works remained unbuilt and the franchise was transferred to George Kelley's Birmingham Industrial Company, with an extension moving the deadline to October 1899.

In 1900 Bradshaw petitioned the city for another utility franchise, this time to build a natural gas plant in the city, promising to furnish high-quality odorless gas to customers at the reduced cost of $1 for illuminating gas and 69¢ for fuel gas. That franchise instead went to Robert Jemison Sr's Birmingham Railway, Light & Power Company.

In 1903 Bradshaw rented his house to Erskine Ramsay while he and Minnie toured the Western states. He sold the house to Ramsay in 1905, and boarded for a while at the Colonial Hotel before moving into the house next door, at 2160 Highland Avenue, in 1909.

Bradshaw had been largely confined to bed since the early 1920s. He suffered a series of strokes in beginning in September 1924 and died the following January. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery.

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