Julius R. Aldridge Collection, WWII 270
Abstract
The Julius R. Aldridge Collection is composed of materials used and collected by Julius
Reid Aldridge of Haw River, NC, during World War II while he worked on and helped
operate his family's dairy farm as an essential wartime business. The bulk of the
collection is composed of correspondence sent by service members from the Haw River
area whom Reid and his wife Gladys Aldridge knew, and whom Reid specifically knew
from playing with the men on his baseball teams before the war. The Aldridges kept
a routine of writing letters with these service members, with Reid and Gladys keeping
a notecard index of all of the military addresses for the people with whom they corresponded.
These included local men Jerry T. Bullard, James B. Clark, Benjamin R. Pearson, and
George W. Snotherly and his brother. The Aldridges passed on home front news to the
service members, and the men talked baseball with Reid.
The collection includes an original WWII-era pocket memo book containing names of
individuals and couples that Julius and Gladys Woods Aldridge knew in the Haw River
community during the 1940s. Several of these names including military service mailing
addresses for the individuals. The memo book also contains three and a half pages
of names of Haw River men who were in military service during WWII, labeled "Boys
in Service." As for the address cards, many of the cards contain ranks, military service
mailing addresses, and military units of men from Haw River.
There is included an original ledger book from the Fairview Dairy Farm in Haw River
run by the Reid Aldridge's father Joseph Aldridge, containing the breeding records,
along with other information on the operation of the farm. It contains the names of
the born cows, their parentage, calves' birth dates, and notes on the cows and their
young's behavior on the farm. The entries date from 1934 through the end of 1945.
The ledger indicates the challenges that a North Carolina dairy farm went through
between the Great Depression through WWII.
Descriptive Summary
- Title
- Julius R. Aldridge Collection
- Call Number
- WWII 270
- Creator
- Aldridge, Julius R. (Julius Reid), 1914-1976
- Date
- 1934-1945, 1940s, various dates, undated
- Extent
- 0.130 cubic feet
- Repository
- State Archives of North Carolina
Restrictions on Access & Use
Access Restrictions
There are no restrictions on accessing this collection.
Use Restrictions
There are no restrictions on using this collection.
Preferred Citation
[Item name or title], [Folder Numbers], Julius R. Aldridge Collection, WWII 270, WWII
Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C.
Arrangement Note
The collection is arranged by format of materials and creators in folders.
Biographical Note
Julius Reid Aldridge (who went by "Reid") was born on June 23, 1914, in the small
community of Haw River in Alamance County, NC, to Joseph Andrew and Mary Cornelia
Allen Aldridge. Joseph Aldridge was a farmer, who may have been operating a dairy
farm by 1930. Julius Aldridge attended Haw River schools until graduating in 1932.
He would go on to attend North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering
(now North Carolina State University) in Raleigh, NC, as a freshman during the 1932-1933
school year at the height of the Great Depression. He only attended college for two
years due to limited funds. Julius returned to Haw River to join his father in operating
the family's dairy farm, called Fairview Dairy Farm. Having been a multi-sport athlete
in high school, Aldridge continued playing baseball on a local Haw River amateur league
team through the start of World War II.
Julius Aldridge married Gladys Rebecca Woods on August 15, 1941, at Julius' brother
house in Alamance County. The couple moved into a small frame house near his father's
dairy farm while he helped his father mange the daily operations. With the United
States' entrance into World War II, Aldridge was granted a military deferment to remain
home working on the dairy farm, as dairy was considered a vital resource and his family's
farm was denoted as an essential business. In lieu of service, the Aldridges kept
a routine of writing letters with service members from the Haw River area whom they
knew, and whom Reid specifically knew from playing with the men on his baseball teams.
Reid and Gladys kept a notecard index of all of the military addresses for the people
with whom they corresponded. These included Jerry T. Bullard, James B. Clark, Benjamin
R. Pearson, and George W. Snotherly and his brother. They passed on home front news
to the service members, and the men talked baseball with Reid.
Reid's father Joseph Aldridge died on December 14, 1945, after the official end of
WWII. Both Reid and his brother William Aldridge decided to dissolve Fairview Dairy
Farm at the end of 1945, having struggled through the war with all the challenges
that were present on the home front at the time. Reid Aldridge held several different
jobs afterwards, including working for Melville Dairy in Burlington, NC. On Saturday
evenings while working these other jobs, Aldridge served as a the cashier for Red
Barn Auction, which operated a local auction out of the family's dairy farm barn.
In 1957, Aldridge was working as a driver for Industrial Food in Burlington.
In the late 1950s, he began working as a dairy inspector for the state of North Carolina,
traveling around the state inspecting state-owned dairy farms' operations. In 1959,
Aldridge became the supervisor of the North Carolina State University Dairy Farm at
4700 Hillsborough Street on the west side of Raleigh. Aldridge's whole family moved
to live on a property on the farm. After retiring from supervising the NC State farm,
he became a dairy inspector again for a short time before retiring for good. Julius
R. Aldridge died on April 20, 1976, and was buried in Long's Chapel United Church
of Christ Cemetery in Burlington, NC.
Contents of the Collection
Subject Headings
Acquisitions Information
The collection was deposited with the Military Collection of the State Archives of North Carolina by Becky A. Hill of Raleigh, NC, daughter of Julius R. Aldridge, in September 2021, with the donation completed in November 2021.
Processing Information
Correspondence is arranged within folders based on the names of the authors who wrote to Reid Aldridge, and chronologically based on the dates written on the letters or from the content of the letters. When letters only had a postmark on envelopes accompanying the letters, a month and year was penciled in surrounded by brackets on the top of the letter itself. In some cases, exact dates based on the day written were written as circa dates in brackets on the top of the letters. Otherwise, correspondence without specific dates then resulted in having circa dates written to a month and year. All envelopes were discarded after any necessary information was added in pencil to the letters. Envelopes with unique information or dates were photocopied and attached to each letter, using an acid-free plastic clip. Full names for some of the letters' authors were provided by the processing archivist after doing research, using names and serial numbers written on the envelopes.
The address index cards were removed from their metal box and stored in folders. The cards were out of alphabetical order, though individual names were stored in the correct letter category of the box as labeled with first letters of the last names. The cards were rearranged within a given letter category in alphabetical name order. The collection includes a typed, undated biography of Reid Aldridge created by his daughter Becky Hill. The Fairview Dairy Farm ledger book, containing the farm's breeding records, has multiple people's handwriting in it, some of which is Reid Aldridge. The other contributors to the ledger book appear to be Joseph Aldridge (Reid's father), Reid's brother William, and possibly John R. Aldridge (Joseph's older brother who lived in Haw River). The ledger was continuously filled in from 1934 to October 1945.