About us
State of the Aldridge Surname DNA Project 2023
Joseph T. Richardson, Group Admin
joseph.t.richardson@gmail.com
Dear Aldridge Surname Project members,
I was appointed admin of this project a couple of years ago, and I wanted to get in touch with you all and report where we are with Aldridge surname research. I've communicated with several of you, but others I have not, and I'd be interested to meet you and learn about your Aldridge lineages. My Aldridge lineage is from Nathan Aldridge-Alldredge (born about 1739 in Randolph County, North Carolina; d. 1826 in Knox County, Tennessee) and his descendants in Blount County and Lawrence County, Alabama. Here's the main thrust of the research I've been involved with:
SUMMARY (The tl;dr version)
* Multiple lines documented to descend from the Aldridges in Randolph County, North Carolina, match each other, and match a separate descendant of Nicholas Aldridge of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, indicating that this lineage, of haplogroup R1b-U106, is the line from Nicholas Aldridge.
* Another Aldridge lineage, completely separate, of haplogroup I-M223, does not match the Nicholas Aldridge, despite many descendants claiming this ancestry. At least three different families match. Their common ancestor is unclear.
R1b-U106 Aldridge-Alldredge -- Nicholas Aldridge Line
Since I first started doing research years ago, I've known that there were at least two separate Aldridge lines in Lawrence County, Alabama: that of Nathaniel Aldridge, born ca. 1760 in South Carolina, who was in Lawrence County as early as the 1820s, and his descendants; and my line, Dr. William Alldredge, born 1809 in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, who did not come to Lawrence County from Blount County, Alabama, until the 1850s. Dr. William Alldredge was the grandson of Nathan Alldredge (1739-1826) as I mentioned above, and to complicate things, my Nathan Alldredge even appeared as Nathaniel Aldridge in a few early records. For as long as I've been researching, I've seen people connecting the Nathaniel Aldridge in Lawrence County to Nathan Alldredge, either conflating the Lawrence County Nathaniel with Nathan Alldredge's son Nathan, or conflating Nathan Alldredge with Nathaniel's father Nathaniel Aldridge Sr.
Years ago in 1957, Memory Alldredge Lester, a descendant of Dr. William Alldredge, proposed that Nathan Alldredge was the grandson of early Maryland settler Nicholas Aldridge, who died in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, in 1708. I was never certain of this conclusion, since there was no definite documentary proof of the connection: Nicholas Aldridge in Maryland did have a son named William Aldridge born in 1703, and a William Aldridge does appear in Randolph County, North Carolina, in the 1750s, but how could we sure they were the same? William Aldridge in Randolph County, North Carolina, was the father of Nathan Alldredge.
So inevitably, both the Aldridge and Alldredge lines ended up claiming Nicholas Aldridge as their ancestor. It seemed even the Alldredge researchers eventually adopted Nathaniel Aldridge, with material I found online supposing William Aldridge in Randolph County, North Carolina, had BOTH a son named Nathan AND a son named Nathaniel, born around the same time.
When I came to the Aldridge DNA project, I had two major goals: to determine if the Nathaniel Aldridge and Nathan Alldredge lines were in fact related; and to prove or disprove the connection to Nicholas Aldridge in Maryland. Immediately, the answer to the first question was clear: Based on tests that had already been done, the Nathaniel Aldridge and Nathan Alldredge lines were NOT related. Several testers on the Nathan Alldredge-William Aldridge line matched each other and were decidedly in haplogroup R1b-U106, while a tester on the Nathaniel Aldridge line was haplogroup I-M223. Both lines still claimed Nicholas Aldridge as their ancestor, but only one of them could be.
Through progressive hammering away with several Big-Y 700 tests, I believe I've answered the second question: The Alldredge line of Randolph County, North Carolina, DOES descend from Nicholas Aldridge of Anne Arundel County, Maryland. We established this through six different tests:
1 Nicholas Aldridge (d. 1708 Anne Arundel, Md.)
2 Thomas Aldridge (b. 1680 Anne Arundel, Md., d. c. 1712 Maryland) md. Elizabeth Purdy
3 John Aldridge (b. 1712 Anne Arundel, Md., d. 1750 Prince George, Md.) md. Eleanor Watkins
4 Thomas Aldridge (b. 1744 Maryland, d. Kentucky) md. Elizabeth Crow
5 Thomas Aldridge (b. c. 1765 Maryland, d. Kentucky)
6 Elisha Aldridge (b. 1803 Maryland, d. 1874 McLean, Ill.) md. Mary E. Moore
7 William Aldridge (b. 1832 Henry, Kentucky, d. 1907 Washington, Ark.) md. Mariah Watts
8 Isaac Newton Aldridge (b. 1873 Arkansas, d. 1918 Payne, Okla.) md. Emma Dawn Wilson
9 Claude Benjamin Aldridge (b. 1895 Washington, Ark., d. 1980 Washington, Ark.) md. Myrtle Mandie Atterberry
10 Tester #854545
2 William Aldridge (b. 1703 Anne Arundel, Md., d. 1789 Randolph, N.C.)
3 William Aldridge (b. 1729 Randolph, N.C., d. 1789 Randolph, N.C.)
4 Ezekiel Aldridge (b. 1757 Randolph, N.C., d. 1824 Posey, Ind.) md. Rachel Huff
5 Ezekiel Brower Aldridge (b. 1782 Randolph, N.C., d. 1867 White, Ill.), md. Martha Duty
6 Russell Duty Aldridge (b. 1810 Posey, Ind., d. 1853 White, Ill.), md. Sarah Smith Jones
7 William Pervus Aldridge (b. 1844 White, Ill., d. 1918 Gallatin, Ill.), md. Mary Emily Hentchel
8 Charles David Aldridge (b. 1875 Gallatin, Ill., d. 1922 Williamson, Ill.), md. Alice E. Simpson
9 William Wesley Aldridge (b. 1906 Missouri, d. 1968 Kane, Ill.), md. Zora Edna Fowler
10 (private)
11 Tester #B704071
5 Samuel Alldredge (b. 1790 Randolph, N.C., d. 1870 Posey, Ind.), md. Sarah York
6 Jefferson Wayne Alldredge Sr. (b. 1821 Posey, Ind., d. 1885 Posey, Ind.), md. Isabella Whipple
7 Jefferson Wayne Alldredge Jr. (b. 1861 Posey, Ind., d. 1935 Saline, Ill.), md. Laura E. Pruitt
8 Willard J. Aldredge (b. 1889 Posey, Ind., d. 1955 San Diego, Ca.), md. Myrtle Ethel Woolard
9 Athel Henry Aldredge (b. 1925 Saline, Ill., d. 1989 Hernando, Fla.), md. Charlotte Duty
10 (private)
11 Tester #69744
5 Isaac Aldridge (b. 1792 Randolph, N.C., d. 1845 Jackson, Ill.), md. Mary Brown
6 William Brown Aldridge (b. 1833 Jackson, Ill., d. 1906 Millard, Utah), md. Sarah Malinda Brock
7 William Isaac Aldridge (b. 1869 Utah, Utah, d. 1962 Millard, Utah), md. Martha Lizette Theobald
8 Adrian Lavelle Aldridge (b. 1907 Millard, Utah, d. 1983 Millard, Utah), md. Twila Steele
9 Que William Aldridge (b. 1935 Orange, Ca., d. 2011 Bay, Fla.), md. Rinda Gay Perkey
10 Tester #860485
6 Isaac Aldridge (b. 1843 Jackson, Ill., d. 1936 Maricopa, Ariz.), md. Susannah Evans
7 Leo Aldridge (b. 1889 Millard, Utah, d. 1949 Maricopa, Ariz.), md. Ida Romney
8 Miles Isaac Aldridge (b. 1918 Maricopa, Ariz. d. 2015 Maricopa, Ariz.), md. June Kimball
9 Tester #17831
3 Nathan Alldredge (b. 1739 Randolph, N.C., d. 1826 Knox, Ala.) md. Hannah Madden-Maiden
4 Andrew Alldredge (b. 1782 Randolph, N.C., 1848 Blount, Ala.) md. Leah Chaney
5 Dr. William Alldredge (b. 1809 Bledsoe, Tenn., d. 1880 Lawrence, Ala.) md. Nancy Sophronia Brooks
6 Warren Houston Alldredge (b. 1836 Blount, Ala., d. 1864 Spalding, Ga.) md. Esther Elizabeth Jane Daniel
7 William Warren Aldridge (b. 1861 Lawrence, Ala., d. 1958 Morgan, Ala.) md. Iris Rosala Parker
8 William Walter Aldridge (b. 1887 Lawrence, Ala., d. 1956 Morgan, Ala.) md. Mabel Olive McCulley
9 Houston Burch Aldridge (b. 1916 Morgan, Ala., d. 2009 St. Tammany, La.) md. Mildred Gertrude Fertitta
10 Tester #957073
You can view a chart of all these results at https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/aldridge/dna-results.
All six of these tests match. With two different lines from Nicholas Aldridge that match each other, the descent from Nicholas seems to be established.
I-M223 Aldridge
It turns out that the Nathaniel Aldridge line is haplogroup I-M223 -- and that it matches at least two other Aldridge lines. That gives us two prominent Aldridge lineages. The I-M223 Aldridges share an ancestor, sometime within a genealogical span of time, though an accurate estimate of the time to their most recent ancestor is not available.
I've tried to backtrack over the Nathaniel Aldridge line and find where his true line leaves off. It appears that Nathaniel Aldridge (b. ca. 1760 in Abbeville, S.C., d. after 1830 Lawrence County, Alabama) was the son of another Nathaniel Aldridge, born in the 1730s, died before 1800 in South Carolina. This from Aldridge Records, Vol. 2:
https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/idviewer/34303/64
The I-M223 lines are:
1 Nathaniel Aldridge Sr., b. ca. 1730, d. bef. 1800 in S.C., md. Rosamond
2 Nathaniel Aldridge Jr., b. ca. 1760 S.C., d. aft. 1830 in Lawrence County, Alabama
3 James Aldridge, b. 1796 Abbeville, S.C., d. 1878 Lawrence, Ala., md. Nancy Alexander
4 William A. Aldridge, b. 1836 Lawrence, Ala., d. 1920 Lawrence, Ala., md. Clara Anna Elizabeth Boyer
5 Henry Clay Aldridge, b. 1884 Lawrence, Ala., d. 1970 Harris, Texas, md. Effie Caroline Wallace
6 Pat Aldridge, b. 1918 Johnson, Texas, d. 1989 Harris, Texas, md. Rebecca Ann Hixon
7 Test #236472
1 Peter Aldridge, b. 1763 Person, N.C., d. 1813 Person, N.C., md. Judith Waggoner
2 John Aldridge, b. c. 1793 N.C., d. 1870 Kentucky, md. Dicey Taylor
3 Nelson Aldridge, b. 1838 Orange, N.C., d. Louisville, N.C., md. Sarah Lynn
4 John A. Aldridge, b. 1863 Webster, Ky., d. 1912 Webster, Ky., md. Emma Green Sammons
5 John Flournoy Aldridge, b. 1901 Webster, Ky., d. 1984 Lucas, Ohio, md. Nellie Cleve Overfield
6 Lee Allen Aldridge, b. 1920 Webster, Ky., d. 1992 Colorado, md. Patricia Mariane Sovak
7 Test #293040
1 Francis Aldridge, b. c. 1730 Surry, Virginia, d. c. 1770 Wilkes, N.C., md. Henrietta Prince
2 Prince William Aldridge, b. c. 1770 Wilkes, N.C., d. c. 1860 Marion, Ala., md. Mary Ann Coons
3 Ashley Aldridge, b. 1796 Tennessee, d. c. 1860 Fayette, Ala., md. Celia Aldridge
4 Alford Franklin Aldridge, b. 1825 Fayette, Ala., d. 1873 Cleburne, Ark., md. Nancy Ann Hardin
5 Robert Emory Aldridge, b. 1849 Walker, ALa., d. 1933 Okmulgee, Olka., md. Mary Jane Poff
6 Robert Calloway Aldridge, b. 1885 Cleburne, Ark., d. 1972 Pulaski, Ark., md. Anna Robinson
7 C. L. Aldridge, b. 1930 Pulaski, Ark., d. 1982 Pulaski, Ark., md. Violet Udora Price
8 Test #409109
4 James A. Aldridge, b. c. 1830 Fayette, Ala., d. 1862 Rutherford, Tenn., md. Rahama Box
5 Donaphan R. Aldridge, b. 1855 Fayette, Ala., d. 1900, md. Martha Rosa Bell Duncan
6 Jay Aldridge, b. 1886 Pickens, Ala., d. 1965 Lowndes, Miss., md. Mamie Lou Bailey
7 Test #180055
All of these, and at least one more line, are matches to each other. It is uncertain how they connect, but they do connect. I would very much like to see the I-M223 testers upgrade their tests to get some better clarity about how distant their connection might be. If you are of one of these lines, I would be glad if you could get in touch with me.
You can view a chart of these results at https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/aldridge/dna-results.
I would also very much like to see more Aldridge men tested. I am sure there are more Aldridge lines out there, but right now we only have these two major lineages and several other unmatched lines. I would like to see some British Aldridges test, to see if this Nicholas Aldridge line in fact connects to the ancestors that are ascribed to him.
If you have any questions or input, I would love to communicate with you. I want the Aldridge project to be an active and productive project!
Best regards,
Joseph Richardson