The Runaway

The Enterprise
6 October 1898 • Page 3


Algie Foy Aldridge was the youngest son of Caleb Hampton Aldridge, the eldest son of Henry Garner Aldridge and Priscilla Murray Aldridge. When "Hamp", as he was better known, posted this ad in the Stanly County, North Carolina newspaper "The Enterprise", Algie Foy would have been 17 years old. He was born on August 4, 1881 and must have inherited that "mean streak" that ran through the Murray line and into the Aldridge line through his grandmother Priscilla. While some Murray descendants did not seem to inherit this unlucky trait, several in any given generation seem to have suffered from it.

Algie's discontent seemed to show at an early age.

I wondered about his name, "Algie Foy", where did that moniker come from. I think Algie might have been short for "Algernon" and Foy just a trend, as I've seen many "Roy's" and even "Hoy", "Loy", "Doy",and "Coy" being popular names and middle names, for males of his generation. But he was not named for any apparent ancestor. His mother was Elizabeth "Bettie" Floyd  McSwain Aldridge, who had first married John Calloway McSwain, who perished in the Civil War. Hamp Aldridge was her brother-in-law and when her sister Sophia Floyd Aldridge passed away after bearing Hamp only one child, George Gilliam Aldridge, Bettie and Hamp married. Bettie brought a child of her own, Martha Ella McSwain, who would have a daughter by her step-father at the age of 18, and the family would survive this atrocity and remain intact.

That is how powerful a man Hamp Aldridge was in the community. He had a tendency to do whatever he pleased and get by with it. Hamp carried the Murray mean streak. It may have been this trait that drove his son away from him at the age of 17, and Hamp wanted to make sure the boy had no support in his quest for freedom.

Algie must have returned home the prodigal son because he turns up in the 1900 census in his father's house, although the census taker made meatloaf with it.

Name:	Alpha Auldredz [Alpha Aldridge]  [Alpha Auldredg]
Age:	18
Birth Date:	Aug 1880
Birthplace:	North Carolina
Home in 1900:	Tyson, Stanly, North Carolina
Race:	White
Gender:	Male
Relation to Head of House:	Son
Marital Status:	Single
Father's Name:	Hamp Auldredz
Father's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Mother's name:	Elisabeth Auldredz
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Occupation:	View on Image
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Hamp Auldredz 57 Elisabeth Auldredz 59 Nannie Auldredz 28 Alpha Auldredz 18 Saly E Auldredz 12 Lenorio Auldredz 8 Lena Auldredz 3 Inese Auldredz 26

Hamp "Auldredz" is Caleb Hampton Aldridge, followed by Elizabeth, his wife. Nannie was actually "Fannie", who never married and passed away in 1915. "Alpha" is actually Algie Foy, "Saly E" is younger sister Sarah Elizabeth. "Inese" is Inez "Nezzie" McSwain, Hamp's daughter with his step-daughter Ella, and "Lenoiro" and "Lena" were her daughters Lenora and Lina.

Algie did not remain in his father's home long, however. He removed to Cabarrus County, and probably began his lifelong career in the textile industry working in the Cannon mills or similar ones located throughout Concord and nearby Kannapolis. There he met his wife and future victim, Cora Murphy.

Cora Murphy North Carolina, Marriages, 1759-1979

marriage: 25 November 1903 Cabarrus County, North Carolina

father: James Murphey mother: Maggie Murphey spouse: A. F. Aldridge other: C. H. Aldridge, Bettie Aldridge

And I did not mean "victim" in any sense but literally.

Algie and Cora, his Irish bride, show up in the City Directory of Columbia, South Carolina in 1909. He is a Mill Operator.

Algie Foy's Draft Papers describe him  as being of Medium height and build with blue eyes and gray hair. 

Algie's wife Cora was the daughter of James A. and Margaret A. Porter Murphy. Her father was born in Ireland and her mother in North Carolina. Her father, James Alexander Murphy was one of those grand old patriarchs of the 19th century who outlived several wives and was fathering children well into his sunset years. Born in 1816, he died in 1906 in Columbia, Richland County, South Carolina. In the 1910 census, Algie and Cora are shown living in the household of her widowed mother and a number of her siblings, including youngest brother, Emmett.

Name:	Cora Aldrich
Age in 1910:	28
Birth Year:	abt 1882
Birthplace:	North Carolina
Home in 1910:	Columbia Ward 5, Richland, South Carolina
Race:	White
Gender:	Female
Relation to Head of House:	Daughter
Marital Status:	Married
Spouse's Name:	Algie Aldrich
Father's Birthplace:	Ireland
Mother's name:	Margaret Murphy
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Margaret Murphy 58 Mary Murphy 23 Maggie Murphy 21 Algie Aldrich 28 Cora Aldrich 28 Emil Murphy 14

The Columbia City Directory traces their movements and Algie's career changes through the next decade. Algie's name is seen variously as "Alpha", "Alva", "Alfie", "Ollie", and "Algie". It may have been a derivative of the proper name "Alva", which was used randomly in and around Stanly County where he was born.

In 1909, they had been living at 901 9th Street, which was her parents address.
By 1911, the couple had moved to 209 Assembly Street and Algie was a Motorman for the Railway.
1912 - "Alger F." and Cora Aldridge had moved to 890 Lower Street and he was still employed at the same occupation.
1913 - They had moved to 222 Sumter Street and Algie was back to being a Mill Operator.

Old Columbia Library at the corner of Washington and Sumter Streets. 

1915 -  Another move to 638 6th Street and Algie still a Mill Operator.
1916 - This time they were living at 1313 Berkeley Avenue, Mill Operator
1918 - Back to Lower Street, but this time at 819 Lower Street and Algie was now an employee of "Swift and Co."
1920 - They were still at 819 Lower Street, after at least 6 moves in a decade, but Algie had changed jobs again and this time was working for the Union News Company.

A street scene in old Columbia

The 1920 census enumerates the couples two children: Leo and Vermelle. Leo Anthony Aldridge should have been in the 1910 census, being born on Feb. 6, 1908. He was either missed, or living in another household.

Name:	Cara E Aldridge
Age:	37
Birth Year:	abt 1883
Birthplace:	North Carolina
Home in 1920:	School District 4, Richland, South Carolina
Race:	White
Gender:	Female
Relation to Head of House:	Wife
Marital Status:	Married
Spouse's Name:	Algie F Aldridge
Father's Birthplace:	Ireland
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Able to Read:	Yes
Able to Write:	Yes
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Algie F Aldridge 37 Cara E Aldridge 37 Leo A Aldridge 11 Vermell Aldridge 7

The next decade would also show the train of instability.

By 1922, the family had moved to 308 Bull Street and Algie was a News Agent.
On 1923, Algie had again became Mill fodder and moved his family to 709 Green Street, which is now only an Oak tree guarding the end of a dead end road.
709 Greene Street.

Five years later, Algie was now employed as a Jitney Driver and had moved to an apartment building on Park Street, a few blocks over and one block off of the former home on Assembly Street.
Park Street Apartments



By 1930, son Leo has moved out and a teenaged Vermelle is only at home.

Name:	Algie F Aldridge
Gender:	Male
Birth Year:	abt 1882
Birthplace:	North Carolina
Race:	White
Home in 1930:	Columbia, Richland, South Carolina
Map of Home:	View Map
Marital Status:	Married
Relation to Head of House:	Head
Spouse's Name:	Cara Aldridge
Father's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Mother's Birthplace:	North Carolina
Occupation: Education: Military service: Rent/home value: Age at first marriage: Parents' birthplace:	View image
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Algie F Aldridge 48 Cara Aldridge 48 Vernelle Aldridge 17

In 1934, Algie and Cora are still at the same location on Park Avenue and Algie is still a driver.

Name:	Algie F Aldridge
Gender:	Male
Residence Year:	1934
Street address:	424 Park
Residence Place:	Columbia, South Carolina
Occupation:	Driver
Spouse:	Cora E Aldridge
Publication Title:	Columbia, South Carolina, City Directory, 1934

The above article is from the May 19, 1938 edition of The Greensboro Record.  The story was reprinted in newspapers far and wide, giving pretty much the same information. North Carolina, South Carolina and even New York newspapers reported the story of the textile worker who openly admitted the murder of his wife after finding a photo of another man in her possession. The readers were shocked. He didn't deny it. He even blamed it on this unnamed other man whom he assumed his wife was interested in. He had been thinking about the murder for three weeks. It was premeditated. The bad Murray blood was running hot in Algie Foy Aldridge.

Thursday, May 19 1938 edition of  the State Times Advocate of  Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

So what happened next?

Cora did not die immediately, but passed soon after arriving to the hospital.




Her death certificate explains her horrific cause of death with the words "Hacked", "Axe" and "Homocide". In the end she bled to death?

But what of Algie? Did he get his day in court? Did the papers print anything of that?

The amazing answer is "No".

On December 6, 1939,  a year and a half after he murdered his wife Cora on May 18, 1938, Algie Foy Aldridge died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was treated at the South Carolina State Hospital and the doctor notated that he had been under his care since June 8, 1938. Algie had spent about 2 weeks in jail before being declared insane and mentally incapable of standing trial. He spent the remaining year and a half of his life in psychiatric care. Was the cerebral hemorrhage a sign of a brain disorder that may have attributed to his lack of judgement and irrational behavior in the murder of his wife? Possibly. This cause of death shows up in many of the descendants of the Aldridge and Murray families. Is it hereditary? Probably.

There were many stories that began and/or ended in the rolling hills of the Tyson community of Stanly County. Algie Foy Aldridge's story was just one of them.

Name:	Aldridge, Algie Fay
Source:	The State
Date:	12/6/1939
Place:	Columbia

A Bitter Pill: Harvey Layfatte Lemmons

He was only 28 years old and in love. What deep pain led him to this dire and grievous decision, we can only ponder. A choice of product available and an unbearable pain lie before him and on a summer night in June of 1915, Harvey Layfatte Lemmons took his own life. 

Harvey Layfette Lemmonds or Lemmons was born on August 6, 1886  in Cabarrus County, North Carolina to Robert Lemmons, known as Bob and Margaret Olivia Starnes Lemmons known as Leavy. The Lemmons name was spelled multiple ways and in previous generations contained a 'd' at the end, but as it evolved into 'Lemmons', that is how I will record Harvey's name. 

Harvey was one of my Great-grandfathers. My grandmother never knew him and this is the sad tale of why she did not. 

He was born to a farming family, as most were in those days. Judging from his father's estate papers, the family raised cotton and hogs, for the most part, near the Rocky River area of Cabarrus County. Harvey was their very middle child. He had an older brother and an older sister, a younger brother and a younger sister, Maude, Fred, Sam and Minnie. His middle name was likely supposed to have been Lafayette, but it was spelled incorrectly in documents. His mother had a brother, Frederick Layfette Starnes, known as Layfette or "Fate"  so Harvey was likely his namesake. 

Bob Starnes died in 1898 of a lingering illness, judging from a statement by his father-in-law Frederick Fincher Starnes, when Harvey was but 11 years old. Bob owed a substantial sum of money to a merchant named Mr. Oglesby, and Finch Starnes, who was a man of wealth and property, came to the rescue and negotiated with Mr. Oglesby to keep his daughter and her 5 children on their property. Eventually, Finch Starnes and his second wife Abbie, would move from Rocky River to the growing metropolis of Charlotte, where Finch owned 3 or four homes in the Elizabeth and Piedmont Park area. Several of his children would follow, including Frederick Layfette and Leavy Lemmons. Leavy and her children lived in a less glamorous neighborhood in Charlotte called Phifer Hill. It was a village of cottages set up on the former farm of a Mr. William Phifer where most residents were employed by the Louise Cotton Mill.

Harvey went to work there at 12 and his education ceased at that point. He did attempt some self education and was an avid reader and joined the local YMCA. 

Finch Starnes died in 1913, and soon after that, Leavy relocated her family back to Cabarrus County, but to the city of Concord, where Cannon Mills ruled and textile plants abounded. The family lived off of the Old Charlotte Road. Many young widows, even with a bevy of children, remarried in those days, but not Leavy. She had been gored by an angry cow sometime after her marriage, and the horn had hooked her mouth and she had been left with an angry scar, as her mouth ripped and tore across her cheek. The once attractive lady had became reclusive and clung to her family. She remained, for the most part, with her oldest daughter, Maude, after the younger children were grown. 

After the move to Concord, sometime around 1904 to 1905, Harvy fell in love with a beautiful girl named Lottie. They may have known each other previously as children, as Lottie's father ran a grist mill near the Rocky River, very near the one Harvey's grandfather had ran on Caldwell Creek. As it is impossible to determine the exact location at this time, it may have been the very same one. Mathew Hill may have purchased the Mill from the estate of F. F. Starnes. The 1890 Tax List had all of them listed in Township 1 of Cabarrus County, near Harrisburg and on Caldwell Creek, near the Rocky River. F.F Starnes also was taxed for some machinery he owned in Township 10, which included the present Midland area. This may have been machinery at the Mill he had owned and operated. 

Lottie Hill's life gives the impression that she was what we might call in these days a party girl. She liked going out, and her second marriage was to a much married and divorced man, whose other wives listed in divorce papers his weakness for drink, women, song and disappearance. Duncan Burris had no problem in finding wives and girlfriends, so he must  have been a bit of a charmer. 

But back to 1910, the last census that Harvey Layfette or Lafayette Lemmons would be counted in, he was in Charlotte with his young family, working in textiles, after his father raised cotton. His grandfather was enjoying the fruit of his labors in an exclusive neighborhood in Charlotte, with business giants as neighbors, and his widowed mother having moved from Charlotte back to Cabarrus County, living in the Poplar Tent section of the county, Southwest of Concord, likely working at the Gibson Mill in that area, and with her youngest daughter Minnie, her youngest son Sam and his bride May in her household and very near her married older daughter Maude Lemmons Davis. 

On a lovely day in May, the 12th in 1906, two 19 year olds, Harvey Layfette Lemmonds and Lottie Hill were married at the home of her parents in Cabarrus County. Fifteen months later, on August 6, 1907, they would welcome their first child, a daughter named Lula. She may have been named for her cousin Lula Mae Davis, as Harvey's sister Maude Lemmonds Davis, had given birth to Lula Mae in 1903. It would be another 5 years before the second child would come along. 

From all indications, it was not a happy marriage. Lottie liked being in town, after having been a farm girl all of her life, and was not easily kept. She liked the nightlife and did not want to be tied down too much with children. Nature would take its course, however and on November 15, 1912, Elder Edgar Lemmonds was born. There are no hints of where that name came from. It has Irish origins that mean "Older". The choice was an unusual one. Lula was 5 and a half when her brother came along, a modern spacing, but rare for the era. 

Three years later, 8 year old Lula and 3 year old Elder would experience something horrific in their lives. It is not known where the children were staying that night, perhaps with neighbors or relatives, but the story that was passed down to my father by my grandmother and her siblings was this. Lottie had gone out dancing. It was the era of WWI. Maybe Harvey was afraid of being drafted, or perhaps he already had been. Lottie apparently was not one to let bad news, a war, two young children or being 6 months pregnant with her third child, my grandmother, stop her from hitting the honky-tonks. 

Whether Lottie had been  taken by the shy red-head, or just simply wanted out of the large family of mostly girls, in which she was also an 'invisible' middle child, is unknown.  Harvey's grandfather, Finch, was living in Charlotte, Ward 6, at this time, in the Piedmont Park section, across the street from Independence Park, named as such for the Mecklenburg County Declaration of Independence, a document in which 3 ancestors of Harvey had signed, John Query, Hezekiah Alexander and John Foard. His great, great grandfather William Marr Lemmond had been a surgeon during the Revolutionary War and William Marr Lemmonds son, John, one less great preceding the 'grandfather', had signed up as an ensign and later been promoted to Lieutenant.  What a grand heritage had preceded young Harvey Lafayette Lemmons, patriots and his Grandfathers business men farmers and a farming lawyer whose words had spurred North Carolina to succeed from the Union. 

Harvey Layfette Lemmonds worked in the Cotton Mills. At age 28, he had been working there for 16 years. A young man worn weary of tedious work, long hours and a lovely bride who could not be kept at home. He may have wondered if the child she carried was even his. He would never know that she was. DNA tests have linked me, his great-grandchild, to cousins linked to me only by his family tree, Starnes and Lemmonds, Walkers, Whites, Query's and Means and Alexanders. 

Carbolic Acid is a sweet-smelling clear liquid that is added to many different products. It is used in the production of textiles in many different forms.  Harvey's death certificate states that he was a cotton mill 'hand', as employees were referred to as, and that he 'ran speeders' as a living, a job records indicate paid $4.50 a week at that time. 

It also said that he lived in Township 11, which is the southern part of the City of Concord, probably along or just off of the Charlotte Road, which led to the Rocky River and Cabarrus communities in which his family had lived. 

On the evening of June 12, 1915, Lottie Hill Lemmonds had gone out dancing and partying. She was to give birth to her third child in September. Her husband was at work in the cotton mills of Concord, NC, employed there as a laborer who ran spinners. He was jealous and he was depressed. He could take no more. This was not the life the young 28 year old man had imagined for himself. He died of 'Acute Carbolic Acid Poisoning' and his death was ruled a suicide. He was found and his death reported by his younger brother, Samuel Grier Lemmonds of  2nd Buffalo Street in Concord, North Carolina. It is noted that he was Male, White and Married. His birthdate was given as August 6, 1886. His father Robert Lemmons, born in Union County, North Carolina and his mother, Margaret Leavy Starnes born in South Carolina. He was 28 years, 10 months and 6 days old. He attended Common School and was born in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. J E Buchanon was the Coroner and signed the certificate on June 13, 1915 in Concord, NC. 

The body was given to undertakers Bell and Harris and he was buried at Rocky Ridge Cemetery on the 13th of  June, the day after he died.

Rocky Ridge Presbyterian Church is were the family of Lottie Hill is buried. She had her husband interred, not with his own family, but with her parents, William Mathew Hill and Sarah Jane Hooks, her sisters who died young and other members of the Hooks and Hill families. The Church stands next to Stonewall Jackson Training School, a formidable place with huge brick buildings in disrepair and covered in Ivy. The Juvenile Prison, as it was opened in 1907 and would have been in operation when the church bells chimed and Harvey L. Lemmonds body was laid to its final rest. 

When did Lottie discover her husbands end? Did she see the damage that drinking the acid caused his body? What did she feel concerning the pain her wayward ways had caused him? Was he unreasonably jealous or had she given him good reason to be beyond her party girl ways? 

What is definitively known is that on September 8, 1915, Bertha Virginia Lemmons would be born, my grandmother, and she would never know her father. Lottie would quickly remarry Duncan Burris, who lived in Cabarrus, but had Stanly County origins and they would move their family back to Stanly County and their first child, Dorothy, would be born the very next year. Lottie's story is another blog, but she and Duncan would have a slew of children, many who died as infants, in rapid succession. Dunk, was a recorded alchoholic, abuser of women and children, disapearing spouse and womanizer. A lout, a scoundrel and a good-looking charmer all rolled into one. Lottie's penchant for fun and attraction to bad boys had caused her red-haired husband unbearable grief and a horrific death, but she did not stop in her tracks. Music and dance, wine and song would continue in her life. Poor Harvey had borne a heavy and arduous burden and died a horrific death.