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Mary D. Bradford High School

high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ17020470 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bradford High School is a high school located in Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States, that serves students in grades 9 to 12. It is the main high school for students on the north side of the city.

History

Bradford High School was named after Mary D. Bradford, who was superintendent of schools for the Kenosha school system from 1878 to 1894, and again from 1910 to 1921. The former Mary Davison was born in Kenosha County in 1856 and graduated from Oshkosh Normal School in 1876, after which she taught at Kenosha High School from 1876 to 1878. She became a member of the board of visitors of the Milwaukee Normal School in 1892, joined the new faculty of Stevens Point Normal in 1894, the Stout Institute in 1906, and Whitewater State Normal in 1909, where she worked for one year before returning to Kenosha. She retired in 1921 after 45 years in education. Bradford died in Kenosha in 1943 at the age of 87.

The original high school building was built in 1849 and housed "all the children who attended public school classes in the town, from first grade up" but was deemed inadequate by 1890, and a second iteration of the high school opened in 1891, situated on the site of a former grade school. It was poorly constructed and by 1910 the auditorium and assembly hall portions of the building had been condemned.

The third iteration, that became the original Mary D. Bradford High School building, was built in 1924 and is located at Sheridan Road and 57th Street.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mary D. Bradford High School” as high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1878, 1894, 1910, 1921—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1845-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Mary, Bradford and High can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17020470. Authority coordinates are 42.604, -87.855. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1878, 1894, 1910 and 1921.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mary D. Bradford High School”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mary D. Bradford High School primary sources, Mary D. Bradford High School archive and Mary research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mary D. Bradford High School”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mary D. Bradford High School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.