The History of Bradford, Tennessee, Gibson County

Bradford sits in the northeast part of Gibson County and was formerly known as Kimball before taking its current name from Robert E. Bradford, an early settler. The town grew up as a station on the Illinois Central Railroad, built partly on land Bradford himself owned and partly on land bequeathed to Vanderbilt University.

Among the area's earliest pioneers was James M. Baker, a tanner born in Halifax County, Virginia, in 1796, who came to Tennessee in 1838 and settled near Bradford. Much of the surrounding land was dense forest that had to be cleared before settlers could even build a dwelling, giving a sense of how undeveloped this part of Gibson County still was in the late 1830s.

Bradford has long been associated with Doodle Soup, a local delicacy made from the drippings of cooked chicken, and the town observed a dedicated Doodle Soup Festival for a number of years. As of the 2020 census, Bradford had a population of 1,001.