Ira Aldridge's relatives in New York City.

Ira Aldridge was one of the world's greatest actors, and a good amount has been written about him, (2) but not much is known about his family in New York City. Using statements made by Aldridge himself on playbills, in a diary he kept on one of his Continental tours, and in his application for British citizenship, Marshall and Stock were able to establish that he was born in New York City on 24 July 1807. (3) James McCune Smith, who had attended African Free School No. 2 on Mulberry Street while Ira was a student there, stated that his schoolmate was born "in Chapel Street (now West Broadway)" in lower Manhattan, (4) and Longworth's Directory for 1812 (5) confirms that Aldridge's father Daniel was living at the rear of 93 Chapel Street five years later, so it is more than likely true that this was the place where Ira was born.

Other documents suggest that he may not have been christened as Ira. For instance, in 1825 he signed his marriage certificate as Fredrick [sic] William K. Aldridge, (6) and on some of his earliest playbills and promotional materials in England the initials F.W. preceded his surname. Ira may have been only a nickname that he assumed several years later as his first name, for it was not until 1833 that he began appearing on playbills as Ira Aldridge. Toward the end of his life, both on his application for British citizenship in 1863 and on his last will and testament in 1867, (7) he identified himself as Ira Frederick Aldridge. William and K. had by this time disappeared from all his official signatures.

An anonymous biographical pamphlet entitled Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius and published in 1848 or 1849 (8) claims that Ira's father Daniel had been born in Senegal as the son of a "reforming Prince" who was opposed to the slave trade. Other sources point to Maryland and specifically to Baltimore as his birthplace, (9) but his death certificate in 1840 records that he was born in New York in 1772. (10) There is additional evidence proving that Manhattan was his home--at least for most of his adult years. The 1800 Census of New York City lists a black Daniel Aldridge, and later local census records are a bit more ambiguous, showing several Daniel, D. or D.J. Aldridges but giving no indication of their race. However, annual volumes of Longworth's Directory record a Daniel or D. Aldridge living and working in the city as follows:

1803     Daniel, laborer, Barley
1812     Daniel, grain measurer, rear 93 Chapel
1813     Daniel, grain measurer, 76 Leonard
1816-17  Daniel, no employment specified, 1 Beach
1819     D., laborer, 1 Beach
1820-22  D., laborer, Greene and Spring
1825     Daniel, cartman black, 63 Sullivan
1826     Daniel, cartman black, 63 Sullivan and 82 Varick
1827     Daniel, cartman black, 114 Varick
1829     Daniel, no employment specified, 114 Varick
1830-31  Daniel, no employment specified, 46 Laurens
1834     Daniel Aldrich [sic] (colored), huxter [sic], 6 Leonard
1835     Daniel Aldrich (colored), huckster, 3 Leonard

And on his death certificate in 1840 his address is given as 41 Thomas Street.

One may assume that most if not all the Directory entries refer to the same person--namely, Ira's father--for when Ira's mother Luranah died in 1817, the Manhattan Death Libers noted her address as Beach Street, and when James McCune Smith wrote his essay for The Anglo-African Magazine, he recalled that Ira's father Daniel was "a straw-vender in the city of New York ... We well remember the old gentleman--short in stature, with a tall, broad-brimmed white hat, mounted on a high cart filled with his merchandise, and dolefully crying "straw, s-t-r-a-w!" through the streets, especially on Saturday nights." (11) This conforms with the Directory's description of Daniel Aldridge as a "cartman black" and it may also explain the reference to "Daniel Aldrich (colored)" as a "huxter/huckster."

New York City had about 2500 cartmen in 1824-25, nearly half of whom were Irish. (12) Free blacks had little access to the cartman's trade, which in a specialty such as hay carting was a lucrative form of work. (13) If Daniel Aldridge was self-employed, he must have been an unusual exception, and he also must have been fairly successful for in those days buying a horse and cart was becoming expensive, costing more than 120 dollars in 1826. (14) Blacks normally were excluded from the highest paying licensed trades and usually found employment as unskilled manual laborers. It took Daniel Aldridge most of his working life to move up the economic ladder from common laborer to cartman.

But he had another occupation as well. According to the Memoir, Daniel was a "minister of the gospel" who had received a Christian education at "Schenectady College" (founded as Union College) and had tried unsuccessfully to serve as a missionary among his people in Senegal. (15) However, Union College has no record of his enrollment there, and the story of his return to Senegal appears to be apocryphal. Nonetheless, there are reliable sources that verify that he did indeed function as a clergyman in New York. McCune Smith speaks of him as "a strict member, in high standing, in 'Old Zion,'" a black church in lower Manhattan. (16) James Joseph Sheahan, who performed with Aldridge for five years in the British Isles, is more specific, stating that he was a "Calvinistic Minister of Green[e] Street Chapel, New York, his congregation being of the coloured race." (17) A playbill from the Royal Minor Theatre in Manchester (England) dated 14 September 1830 reports that Ira's father "became a Minister of the Presbyterian Persuasion, and now officiates at Zion Chapel, New York." And his obituary in a New York City newspaper in 1840 records that "There are few individuals who have been more generally useful than the Rev. Mr. Aldridge, and whose loss will be more severely felt in New York among his coloured brethren, to whom he was endeared by his faithful discharge of the duties incumbent on him as a Christian minister." (18)

Though the details in these reports differ, the two references to "Old Zion" and "Zion Chapel" suggest that Daniel was affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, originally called the African Chapel or Zion Church (19) and later Mother Zion, (20) which came into being in 1796 when black members of New York's John Street Methodist Episcopal Church sought permission "to hold meetings among themselves, where they might have opportunity to exercise their spiritual gifts, and thereby, as they hoped, become more useful to each other." (21) They had not intended to form a new denomination, but as their numbers increased, they constructed their own church building at the corner of Leonard and Church Streets, and in 1820 formally withdrew from the white Methodist Episcopal Church, and in association with other like-minded black churches, formed an independent conference of African Methodists.

Eight years earlier "a white man by the name of John Edwards who had been expelled from the Quaker Society" (22) had built a church at 101 Greene Street "with a meeting room, and set aside two wings of it for a free dwelling place for preachers who might be interested in a church of his creation" which he incorporated under the name of The African Free Meeting Methodist Society. (23) Several preachers connected with Old Zion who pastored their own church without pay were won over to Edwards's Society, possibly attracted by the promise of free accommodation and a salary, but most of them reconsidered their defection and returned after being threatened with expulsion from Old Zion. (24) The Society subsequently collapsed due to financial difficulties. In 1831 another Methodist Episcopal Church was built on Greene Street; by 1845 it had 462 communicants while Old Zion had 1196. (25) It is not known exactly when Daniel joined Old Zion (26) or whether he was drawn to either of the two churches on Greene Street, but it is unlikely that he was ever a Presbyterian or Calvinistic Minister because had he been, he would not have preached to a black Zionist congregation. A Colored Presbyterian Church was established at Elm Street in 1822, but in its early years it had a feeble existence. It later moved to the corner of Frankfort and William Streets where it had greater success, but it was never called Zion Chapel or Old Zion. (27)

Woodson suggests that while Presbyterians welcomed blacks into their fold, Methodists and Baptists were more successful in proselyting them because their style of worship was less intellectual and more emotional, more evangelical. (28) Daniel may have earned his "high standing" in Old Zion through energetic preaching rather than by reading or memorizing sermons, which appear to have been common practices in Presbyterian churches. (29) He won the respect and affection of his congregation by ministering to them in a strict, faithful but humane fashion. The last we hear of him is that he died "after a painful and lingering illness, in the triumphs of Christian faith ... in the 69th year of his age." (30)

Less is known about Ira's mother Luranah. The Manhattan Death Libers reveals that she died of consumption on 21 April 1817 and was buried by Sexton Aaron Jacobs in the cemetery of "Old Zion," the church her husband served. Her age is listed as 37 and her "place of nativity" as the State of Delaware, not North Carolina or Maryland as reported in other sources. (31) Though her name is recorded as Lavinia Aldridge, there can be no doubt that this was Ira's mother, for her address is given as Beach Street which, as noted earlier, is where Daniel Aldridge lived between 1816 and 1819. Not yet ten years old at the time of her death, Ira must have retained fond memories of his mother all his life, for more than forty years later he named his first daughter after her and also called the first house he owned Luranah Villa. (32)

Still less has been discovered about Ira's stepmother whose name appears to have been Margaret. Trow's New York City Directory for 1861 lists a Margaret Aldridge, colored, widow of Daniel and a washerwoman, living at 137 Laurens Street. (33) If this is truly Ira's stepmother, she must have been much younger than Luranah when Daniel married her some time between 1817 and 1822. McCune Smith cites Ira's elder brother Joshua as having said that Ira "lost his mother while yet a child, and being of a roving disposition, only remained at home a few months after his father's second marriage." (34) This suggests that Ira was by then old enough to fend for himself and that his relationship with his stepmother may not have been an altogether happy one. By 1822, having just turned 15, he was living at 416 Broadway, a quarter mile from his father's house. (35)

On 2 November 1872, the San Francisco Elevator reported the death on 16 September of "Joshua Aldridge, a native of New York, aged 72 years. Mr. Aldridge was an elder bother of Ira Aldridge, the celebrated tragedian." This establishes the fact that Joshua was seven years older than Ira, having been born in New York City when their mother was only twenty years old. There are several Joshua or J. Aldridges listed in New York city directories--one a shipwright, another (or possibly the same) a carpenter later identified more specifically as a ship carpenter, a third (Joshua B. Aldridge) a shoemaker--but the only one designated as colored worked as a whitewasher between 1826 and 1865. This last one appears to have been Ira's brother. In the 1830 Census he is set down as a free black living on Greene Street with a woman, presumably his wife, who was between twenty-four and thirty-six years old, and with four children (three male, one female) below the age often, and two children (one male, one female) between the ages of ten and twenty-four. Longworth's Directory for 1831 confirms that Joshua Aldridge, a whitewasher, lived at the rear of 18 Greene Street, and his appearance in the 1826 edition of Longworth's Directory proves that he had been living there for at least five years. The only other solid piece of information we have about him comes from McCune Smith who noted that both Joshua and Ira "took to the stage" at the same time, "but their father, finding it out, took them away from the theater." (36) This must have happened in 1822 or later, by which time Ira had moved out of his father's house. It is not known when Joshua married and established his own household, but he would have been at least 22 years old when he got involved in stage performances.

The Memoir states that when Luranah died, she left "but two surviving children out of a numerous family. One of these, Mr. Aldridge's remaining brother, was murdered at New Orleans some few years ago. He incurred the anger of some Whites, in a gambling house, and, during the quarrel, one of the 'free and enlightened citizens' gave him his quietus with a bowie-knife. Being a 'nigger,' of course no inquiries into the transaction were made, and no inquest was held upon the body." (37) The author of the Memoir either invented this tale or confused the murdered brother with Joshua, who apparently was still living in the parental home as Ira's "remaining brother" when their mother died. The rest of this "numerous family" may have already scattered, one perhaps moving as far away as New Orleans.

There is no mention of a sister in the Memoir, in the recollections of McCune Smith and Sheahan, or in the biography written by Marshall and Stock, but a married sister named Susannah Peterson turns up living in New York City in A.S. Abdy's seldom cited Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America, from April 1833, to October, 1834. Abdy, a British traveler interested in the condition of American blacks, included in his journal an account of the brave attempt by Susannah's teenage son William to rescue seven young white boys who had fallen through thin ice while skating. William had plunged in after them and saved two of the lads, but had become fatally trapped under the ice when seeking to reach the others. Several local newspapers carried this tragic story, with the New York American on 24 December 1833 offering to take up a collection for the poor, distressed family of the heroic "colored boy Peterson." Abdy promptly sought out the family and offered some work to Susannah, who supported three other young children and an ailing husband (38) by taking in washing. Abdy was impressed by the dignity and fortitude of this woman, noting that "everything, in the furniture of the room, the decent behavior of the children, and the general deportment of the parent, bespoke full as much propriety and respectability as I ever met with in the same class of life, whatever might be the occupation or complexion." (39) Abdy went on to say that "Mrs. Peterson's brother, who is known in England as the African Roscius, had occasionally sent her remittances of money, and had expressed in one of his letters from [Great Britain], an intention to provide for her unfortunate son's education." (40)

So Ira not only maintained contact with his sister while he was abroad but also offered her and her family material support, including a pledge to educate his nephew William, who would have been a small child when Ira had left the United States a decade earlier. The young actor evidently came from a good family and remained a caring, responsible brother while trying to establish a career for himself in the British Isles.

Aside from these few fragments of information about Ira's parents, siblings, nephews and nieces, we know next to nothing about them or about others who may have been part of his immediate or extended family in the United States. Thanks to the Marshall/Stock biography and earlier sources we do know a little more than this about Ira's life and activities in New York City before he departed to pursue a theatrical career in the British Isles at age 17, but that's a story for another time.

(1) Bernth Lindfors is Professor Emeritus of English and African Literatures, The University of Texas at Austin.

(2) The major studies are Herbert Marshall and Mildred Stock, Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian (New York: Macmillan, 1958), and Owen Mortimer, Speak of Me as I am: The Story of Ira Aldridge (Wangaratta, Australia: Owen Mortimer, 1995), but there have been numerous articles as well.

(3) Marshall and Stock, p. 23.

(4) Smith, "Ira Aldridge," The Anglo-African Magazine 2.1 (January 1960): 28.

(5) Officially Longworth's American Almanac, New York Register, and City Directory, for the Thirty-Seventh Year of American Independence. Different volumes of this annual almanac will be cited simply as Longworth's Directory.

(6) The marriage certificate in reproduced in Bernth Lindfors, "'Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice': New Biographical Information on Ira Aldridge," African American Review 28.3 (1994): 458.

(7) Marshall and Stock, pp. 291 and 326.

(8) (London: Onwhyn, n.d.). Marshall and Stock, p. 11, give the date as 1849, but the copy held at the University of Pennsylvania Library has 1848 penciled in on the title page. Hereafter this pamphlet will be cited as Memoir.

(9) Beatrice Jackson Fleming and Marion J. Pryde, Distinguished Negroes Abroad (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1946); Anon. "The First Colored Convention," The Weekly Anglo-African 15 October 1859, p. 1; Smith, p. 28.

(10) Marshall and Stock, p. 19. The certificate can be found in Liber 12 (1840) at the Bureau of Records and Statistics, Department of Health, Manhattan.

(11) Smith, p. 28.

(12) Graham Russell Hodges, New York City Cartmen, 1667-1850 (New York and London: New York UP, 1986), pp. 136-137.

(13) Ibid., p. 144, 152

(14) Ibid., p. 209.

(15) Memoir, p. 8.

(16) J.J. Sheahan, "'Titus Andronicus': Ira Aldridge," Notes and Queries 17 August 1872, p. 133.

(17) Smith, p. 28. For information on Sheahan, see Wm. Andrews, "Death of Mr Sheahan: Historian of Hull," Hull Daily Mail 26 December 1893.

(18) Quoted in the Memoir, p. 9.

(19) David Henry Bradley, Sr., A History of the A.M.E. Zion Church (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1965), Part I, p. 50.

(20) William J. Walls, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church: Reality of the Black Church (Charlotte, NC: A.M.E. Zion Publishing House, 1974), p. 27.

(21) Jonathan Greenleaf, A History of the Churches of All Denominations, in the City of New York, from the First Settlement to the Year 1846 (New York: French, 1846), p. 321. This is a paraphrase of a remark made in Christopher Rush's A Short Account of the Rise and Progress of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America (New York: Christopher Rush, 1843), p. 9, a history written by one of the founders and earliest bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

(22) Bradley, I, pp. 58-59. Rush, p. 28, describes Edwards as "sometimes a kind of troublesome man, acting as if he did not enjoy his right mind."

(23) Walls, p. 68.

(24) Ibid.; Bradley, I, p. 59; John Jamison Moore, History of the A.M.E. Church in America (York, PA: Teachers' Journal Office, 1884), p. 30.

(25) Greenleaf, pp. 290, 329-330.

(26) He is not named in Moore's History as an ordained Deacon, Elder or Bishop in Old Zion, so he must have functioned as an Exhorter (licensed public speaker), local preacher or itinerant preacher in the Church's hierarchy. See Moore, pp. 80-81 for a description of these various offices.

(27) E.H. Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1864), Vol. 2, p. 257; Andrew E. Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro--A History (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1966), p. 37. Alfred Niven's Encyclopaedia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Encyclopaedia Publishing Co., 1884) makes no mention of the Colored Presbyterian Church or of any white Presbyterian church in New York City called Zion.

(28) Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church. 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1921), pp. 97-98.

(29) Gillett, Vol. 1, p. 159; Robert Ellis Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1895), p. 89.

(30) Colored American 10 October 1840, p. 1.

(31) Smith, p. 28; Weekly Anglo-African 15 October 1859, p. 1.

(32) Marshall and Stock, p.253.

(33) Trow's New York City Directory for the Year Ending May 1, 1861, ed. H. Wilson (New York: John F. Trow, 1860), Vol. 74, p. 28.

(34) Smith., p. 29. Smith's mishandling of quotation marks makes it unclear whether this is a direct quote or a summary of what Joshua said.

(35) George A. Thompson, Jr., A Documentary History of the African Theatre (Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1998), p. 100.

(36) Smith, p. 29.

(37) Memoir, p. 9.

(38) We learn from Doggett's New-York Directory (New York: J. Doggett, Jr., 1845), p. 286, that "Susannah Peterson, colored, widow of Thomas," was still taking in washing at the rear of 264 Stanton Street in 1845.

(39) (London: John Murray, 1835), Vol. 2, p. 45.

(40) Ibid., p. 46.

Bernth Lindfors (1)