Julia Aldrich

When Julia A. Aldrich died in 1900, the Providence Journal reported that she “was probably the oldest unmarried woman in this State.” She was just 12 hours shy of her 98th birthday. 

A feminist some 50 years before feminism was born, Aldrich followed her own path through her long life. During an era when women were forbidden either by law or custom from full civic participation, Aldrich took on three careers, first as a mill operator, then as a frontier settler and finally as a nurse. 

Her unconventional choices earned her widespread notoriety and grudging respect from the legions of Rhode Island residents who either knew her or knew of her. When she died in a friend’s home on Providence’s Thayer Street, the Providence Journal, traditionally loathe to devote space to the obituaries of women, published a 500-word eulogy. She had earned her fame, wrung it from the populace as surely as she had wrung a living from the hard soil of the young nation’s frontier. 

Born in Smithfield in 1802, Aldrich was the fourth child of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Aldrich. Though her family was close and loving, it was not wealthy. 

Because her father was too ill to work, at the age of 5 Julia claimed her place in the history of the Industrial Revolution when she became the first woman to take a job at Slater Mill. She was joined there by her three younger brothers, Daniel, Curtis and Frederick.

Aldrich excelled at the mill work, cheerfully picking black spots from the bushels of cotton that passed through the mill every day. But at the age of 40, after 30 years at Slater Mill, Aldrich felt the call of the wide open spaces in the country’s burgeoning Western frontier. 

In 1842, with only her few belongings — a churn, her knitting needles, assorted blankets — for company, Aldrich left her native New England and traveled west to Ohio. She lived there for 10 years, forging a living from the unforgiving frontier landscape. Entirely self-reliant, Aldrich spun her own thread, sewed, weaved and churned her own butter and cheese. 

After a decade in the West, Aldrich received word from her brother that their mother had passed away at the age of 76. Though Aldrich had made a successful life for herself and enjoyed the solitude of her Ohio home, she gladly returned East to be with her family. 

Her three older brothers and one younger sister had remained in Rhode Island with their father, who, despite a life-long physical impairment, lived to be 84 years old. 

Thus, at 50 years old, Aldrich found herself embarking upon the third and longest of her remarkable careers — her time as a nurse in Providence.

Aldrich quickly distinguished herself as one of the city’s most prominent nurses, coming to be referred to affectionately as “Aunt Julia” by her many charges. Many of the city’s oldest and most well-known families retained the services of Aunt Julia, whose kindly demeanor and unpretentious airs made hers a calming presence. She was a mainstay in the Providence households of the Wendell Hale family and of Melinda Moulton, a well-respected resident of Thayer Street at the time.

An avowed spinster, Aldrich never married, nor expressed any desire to do so, though she was reported to be quite handsome and was pursued by several of the men who worked with her at Slater Mill. 

During her stint as a nurse, Aldrich lived alone and kept house in her small apartment on Providence’s East Side. Even in old age, her face and eyes retained the strength she had demonstrated in her voyage into the unsettled American West. A woman of average height and build, Aldrich’s most distinctive physical characteristic was her shoulder length crop of blonde hair.

At the age of 90, after some 85 years of labor, Aldrich finally retired. She gave up her nursing job and moved in with her older brother, Curtis, her last living relative. Her only sister, Adella, had passed away some 30 years earlier. 

Upon her brother’s death, she took up residence with Melinda Moulton, a former charge, at her apartment at 35 Thayer St. There she lived out her final days, always, according to friends and acquaintainces, in good spirits and with a keen mind. 

Even in her late 90s, Aldrich was noted for her ability to remember dates and recall when local buildings were erected. Her obituary in the Providence Journal noted that Aldrich “was especially proficient in remembering ... when certain important changes took place pertaining to traffic by boat, railway, stage coach and horse car.”

On her 95th birthday, Aldrich permitted herself a brief lament, expressing her desire to die. 

“My hands won’t hold the knitting needles,” she told the crowd that had gathered to celebrate her birthday at Melinda Moulton’s Thayer Street residence, “and when an old lady has to give up her knitting she’s pretty badly off.” 

She got her wish almost exactly three years to the day later, when she died peacefully in her bed on July 1, 1900. Having lived a life that spanned nearly a century, Aunt Julia breathed her last breath just 12 hours before she was to begin her 99th year.

She was buried in Grace Church Cemetery.