ALDRICH, ARMISTEAD ALBERT (1858-1945). Armistead Albert Aldrich, judge and historian, was born in Crockett, Texas, to Oliver Cromwell and Eliza Jane (Masters) Aldrich on April 10, 1858, the day his father was elected Houston county clerk. He was educated privately and sent on horseback to attend the University of Virginia in 1877. In 1883 he was admitted to the Texas bar. In Crockett he served as a school board member from 1890 to 1892, county judge from 1892 to 1896, member of the 1918 District Exemption Board and the 1936 Texas Centennial^qv Advisory Committee, and chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee from 1926 to 1936. Aldrich was also a representative to the Twenty-seventh Texas Legislature. Austin College in Sherman, where he was a trustee from 1900 to 1930, awarded him an honorary LL.D. on May 31, 1937. He was a Presbyterian elder and Sunday school superintendent. He was a popular orator and served as master of ceremonies when a crowd of 5,000 attended the dedication of San Francisco de los Tejas Mission Park on July 4, 1935. He wrote a weekly history column in the Crockett Courier and wrote a History of Houston County (1943). He was a member of the Knights of Pythias, president of a chapter of the Sons of the Republic of Texas,^qv president of the David Crockett Memorial Association, president of the Houston County bar, and organizer of the David Crockett Building and Loan Association and the Aldrich Abstract Company.

In 1881 Aldrich married Willie Arledge. They had seven children. Two Aldrich family homes are now museums in Crockett: the Greek Revival Monroe-Crook (1854), where four generations of Aldriches lived; and the Eastlake-style Downes-Aldrich House (1893), where Aldrich died on August 25, 1945. Aldrich's papers are in the Barker Texas History Center,^qv University of Texas at Austin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Armistead Albert Aldrich, The History of Houston County, Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1943). A. A. Aldrich Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Clarence R. Wharton, ed., Texas under Many Flags (5 vols., Chicago: American Historical Society, 1930). Suzanne Winckler, "Home Sweet Home," Houston Home and Garden, April 1986.

Mary Ann Edwards