The following biographical information is provided by Stuart M. Frank, Ph.D., Senior Curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass., and Executive Director Emeritus of the Kendall Whaling Museum in Sharon, Mass.:

William E. Braley (1874-1928) was an art teacher, newspaper cartoonist, and illustrator in his native Fall River, Massachusetts.  The son of William J. Braley, house carpenter, and his British-born wife Elizabeth, William Ernest Braley was born in June 1874, was evidently educated in the local schools, and by 1889, at age about 15, was already listed as an artist in the Fall River City Directory.  He traveled to Alaska in 1898, possibly in company with the New Bedford and San Francisco whaling fleet but more likely on account of the Klondike Gold Rush then in progress.  Some of his drawings, including genre scenes of Eskimo life, survive from these western adventures.  He was still away when the 1900 census was taken but later returned to Fall River and joined the faculty of the Slade School. 

On 10 July 1905, in Henry County, Illinois, he married Harriet Runnell.  (She was born 24 September 1876 in Henry County, but some records erroneously list her birthplace as Ohio, which was actually the birthplace of her father.)  The couple had one daughter, Doris, born in Fall River in 1909.  In 1910 Braley was listed as a drawing teacher, in 1920 as Supervisor of Drawing at the Slade School, and he was evidently still working there as Director of Fine Arts almost right up until his premature death in 1928. 

In the Kendall Collection of the New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts, is a series of six pencil drawings of Eskimo vernacular subjects at Kotzebue Sound and Hotham Inlet, Alaska.  Each is slightly smaller than 9 x 12 inches (23 x 30 cm), inscribed in pencil holograph with a generic title, signed "William E. Braley," and dated 1898.