[3] When the American Revolutionary War started, Bradford left his business in his son's hands and, despite being middle aged, went into active military service with the Pennsylvania militia.

Because the wound he received at the Battle of Princeton continued to trouble him, when British forces withdrew from Philadelphia he resigned from the militia and returned to the city.

Thomas's son Samuel Fisher Bradford[5] continued the family tradition and is noted for the American printing of Rees's Cyclopædia.

He was descended from one of the first settlers in Pennsylvania; and was one of four generations of printers, who have uniformly distinguished themselves, by devoting to the Press to the preservation and extension of the liberties of our country.

His remains was interred on Monday afternoon in the Presbyterian grave-yard in Arch-street, attended by a large concourse of the inhabitants of the city, and particularly by the early and steady friends of the revolution, who can never recollect the important events of the year 1774, 1775, and 1776, without connecting them with the name of this Patriotic Citizen.