I was wondering if these were just people's initials, for example, in Mary Ann Bradley's case, Annie Brewster is immediately above and the handwriting looks very similar (eg. look how the capital 'B' is formed in both names) - is the reference 'A.B' after Mary Ann's name the initials of Annie Brewster?
On the page with James Bradley's name, look at the entry for George Kelly further up the same page, it is followed by 'W.J.'. The 'W' in particular is very distinctive in having little tails that shoot off in different directions at the top and both letters look exactly the same as those in the name William Jackson several entries above. Both James Kane and James Bradley on that page seem to be initialled 'W.F.C.' and have the same handwriting - it might be worth looking at nearby pages for someone with initials like W.F.C.
As to why this would happen, I don't know. At first I wondered if it could mean that Annie Brewster signed for Mary Ann Bradley (and W.F.C. signed for James Kane and James Bradley) and indicated same by initialling the name.
But it does look like name initials to me, it would be interesting to hear what other folk think.
Edited to add: I looked at other random pages and there are other examples where it looks like names being endorsed with someone else's initials, often the initials seem to relate to someone on the same page, the handwriting of the name and endorser invariably looks the same. There is a similar discussion here, with a similar conclusion regarding folk signing for others:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=136112.0
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Topic: Post-Nomials on Ulster Covenant (Read 685 times)