John Green Brady - Childhood in New York City

Childhood in New York City

Brady was orphaned at an early age and found living on the streets of New York City by Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. a well-known and popular New York City philanthropist and the father of future US 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt. Many years later, as an adult, Brady would approach the younger Theodore Roosevelt then governor of New York, in 1900, at a conference in Portland, Oregon, warmly shake his hand and tell him the following story:

"Governor Roosevelt, the other governors have greeted you with interest, simply as a fellow governor and a great American. but I greet you with infinitely more interest, as the son of your father, the first Theodore Roosevelt." When greeted warmly by Governor Roosevelt and asked why and in what special way he had been interested in his father, Governor Brady replied, "Your father picked me up on the streets of New York, a waif and an orphan, and sent me to a Western family, paying for my transportation and early care. Years passed and I was able to repay the money which had given me my start in life, but I can never repay what he did for me, for it was through that early care and by giving me such a foster mother and father that I gradually rose in the world until I greet his son as a fellow governor of a part of our great country."

After being picked from the Orphan Train he lived with the family of John Green, of Tipton County, Indiana. He married Elizabeth Jane Patton in 1887 in Sitka, Alaska. Children: John Green Brady Jr., Hugh P. Brady, Sheldon Jackson Brady, Mary Anna Brady and Elizabeth P. Brady. He attended Yale University and graduated in 1874.