Julius R. Aldridge: Haw River Dairy Farmer Writes to WWII Soldiers
By Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina
Julius Reid Aldridge (who went by “Reid” and “Chuck”) 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.
Julius R. Aldridge Collection: Documenting Haw River in WWII
A recent donation to the Military Collection of the State Archives of North Carolina is the Julius R. Aldridge Collection. The 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.
You can access the Julius R. Aldridge Collection (WWII 270) in the WWII Papers of the State Archive of North Carolina in the Search Room of the State Archives of North Carolina in Raleigh, NC. The finding aid for the collection is available online here.
Resources
- Julius R. Aldridge Collection, WWII 270, WWII Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC. Finding aid at https://axaem.archives.ncdcr.gov/findingaids/WWII_270_Julius_R__Aldridge_Col_.html
