Read Aldrich Name Meaning, Family History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms (HouseOfNames)
See the Aldrich surname, family crest & coat of arms. Free Search. Uncover the Aldrich surname history for the English Origin. What is the history of the last name Aldrich?

The many generations and branches of the Aldrich family can all place the origins of their surname with the ancient Anglo-Saxon culture. Their name reveals that an early member worked as a the Old English personal name Aldrich, meaning old ruler, and refers to "a son of Aldrich." [1]

Early Origins of the Aldrich family
The surname Aldrich was first found in the counties of Sussex, Suffolk, and Surrey, where the Aldrich family held a family seat from very early times. The family had the Saxon spellings of Alderich, Ealdric, or possibly Aelfric before the Conquest.

Aldridge is a town in Staffordshire (now the West Midlands) that dates back to the Domesday Book where it was listed as Alrewic and literally means "dwelling or farm among alders" having derived from the Old English word alor + wic. [2]

The parish was originally in the union of Walsall, in the hundred of Offlow, comprised 7,752 acres and was anciently held by Robert, a tenant of William fitzAnsculf and was worth 15 shillings. [3]

Early History of the Aldrich family
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Aldrich research. Another 34 words (2 lines of text) covering the years 1647, 1710, 1566 and 1507 are included under the topic Early Aldrich History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.

Aldrich Spelling Variations
Before the last few hundred years, the English language had no fast system of spelling rules. For that reason, spelling variations are commonly found in early Anglo-Saxon surnames. Over the years, many variations of the name Aldrich were recorded, including Aldridge, Aldrich, Alderich, Alderidge, Eldrich, Elderidge, Elderich and many more.
Read Surname Database: Aldrich Last Name Origin (The Internet Surname Database)
This interesting name is derived either from the Olde English pre 7th Century personal compound name "Aedelric". or the later town of Aldridge in Staffordshire, or Aldridge Grove in Buckingham, or from some 'lost' medieval village known to have existed near Worcester. The original personal name was composed of the elements 'adel' meaning noble and 'ric'- a ruler (noble ruler), and it is hardly surprising that in ancient times it was one of the most popular given names. This affection was transferred into the later 12th century surnames, although how many originate from the name and how many from former residence at one of the places so-called is not very unclear. The place names do derive from the Old English 'ale-wic', translating as 'the farm (wic) amongst the alder trees', and the Staffordshire town, then a single farm, is also recorded inthe Domesday Book. It is not clear as to precisely how many surnames have been created from the various sources, but they certainly include Aldrich, Aldrick, Aldridge, Alldridge, Allderidge, Elderidge, Eldridge, Elrick, Oldridge, and the dialectally transposed 'Arlidge'. The name, as a given name is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 in the spellings of Ailred, Aldret and Eldred, whilst early examples of the surname include Richardus Alurici, in the charters of Warwickshire in the year 1209, Robert Alrych in the former county of Huntingdonshire in 1279, and William Eldrich in Surrey in 1336. Drogo de Alrewic in the 1202 Pipe Rolls of Stafford, most certainly originated from the town. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Hugo Aelrici, which was dated 1095, in the rolls of the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, during the reign of King William 11, known as 'Rufus', reigned 1087 - 1100. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
Read Celtic League (Wikipedia)
The Celtic League is a pan-Celtic organisation, founded in 1961, that aims to promote modern Celtic identity and culture in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man – referred to as the Celtic nations; it places particular emphasis on promoting the Celtic languages of those nations. It also advocates further self-governance in the Celtic nations and ultimately for each nation to be an independent state in its own right. The Celtic League is an accredited NGO with roster consultative status to ECOSOC (The United Nations Economic and Social Council).
Read The Crabfish (Wikipedia)
"The Crabfish" is a ribald humorous folk song of the English oral tradition. It dates back to the seventeenth century, appearing in Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript as a song named "The Sea Crabb" based on an earlier tale. The moral of the story is that one should look in the chamber pot before using it.

Owing to the indelicate nature of its theme this ballad was intentionally excluded from Francis James Child's renowned compilation of folk songs The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The song has a Roud Folk Song Index of 149.
Read Francis James Child (Wikipedia)
Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry. In 1876 he was named Harvard's first Professor of English, a position which allowed him to focus on academic research. It was during this time that he began work on the Child Ballads. The Child Ballads were published in five volumes between 1882 and 1898. While Child was primarily a literary scholar with little interest in the music of the ballads, his work became a major contribution to the study of English-language folk music.
Interesting that Johns Hopkins tried to recruit him and Harvard created a new position and title in an effort to keep him.

Child considered that folk ballads came from a more democratic time in the past when society was not so rigidly segregated into classes, and the “true voice” of the people could therefore be heard. He conceived “the people” as comprising all the classes of society, rich, middle, and poor, and not only those engaged in manual labor as Marxists sometimes use the word. 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:31AM

Though there were no graduate schools in America at the time, a loan from a benefactor, Jonathan I. Bowditch, to whom the book was dedicated, enabled Child to take a leave of absence from his teaching duties to pursue his studies in Germany. There Child studied English drama and Germanic philology at the University of Göttingen, which conferred on him an honorary doctorate, and at Humboldt University, Berlin, where he heard lectures by the linguists Grimm and was much influenced by them. 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:33AM

Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett), the first enslaved African American to sue for her freedom in the courts based on the law of the 1780 constitution of the state of Massachusetts, which held that “all men are born free and equal.” The Jury agreed and in 1781 she won her freedom. Her lawyer had been Theodore Sedgwick. 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:35AM

Read Child Ballads (album) (Wikipedia)
Child Ballads is a studio album by American singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and musician Jefferson Hamer, released on February 11, 2013, by Wilderland Records. It serves as Mitchell's sixth studio album and Hamer's second. The album is composed of old folk ballads from the collection of the same name by Francis James Child re-arranged by the duo. They recorded the album with producer Gary Paczosa in early 2012.
Bookmarked Introduction to and list of Child ballads by Peter Robins (peterrobins.co.uk)
The American academic Francis J Child devoted much of the latter part of his life to collecting and studying traditional ballads. His first publication on the subject was English and Scottish Ballads, 8 vols published in 1857-8. This was revised and augmented in a collection of 305 British ballads, published in 5 volumes in 1882-1898 as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, often known as the ‘Child Ballads’. These were republished in 2003 by Dover Press. In addition, copies of the 19th-century edition are now available on the Internet Archive: vols I, II, III, IV, V. Copies of the original 1857 vols are also available on Google Books: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII. See Wikipedia entries on Child and the ballads. The text on this site, based on files kindly provided by Cathy Lynn Preston of the University of Colorado, provides the text of those ballads for browsing and searching; it does not provide Child’s scholarly commentary.
Read Child Ballads (Wikipedia)
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.

Burl Ives’s 1949 album, The Return of the Wayfaring Stranger, for example, includes two: “Lord Randall” and “The Divil and the Farmer”. 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 08:59AM

In 1956 four albums (consisting of eight LPs) of 72 Child Ballads sung by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd were released: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vols. 1–4. 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:05AM

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of Child Ballad 26, “The Twa Corbies” 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:06AM

Joan Baez sang ten Child ballads distributed among her first five albums, the liner notes of which identified them as such. 

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:07AM

Read Star of the County Down (Wikipedia)

"Star of the County Down" is an Irish ballad set near Banbridge in County Down, in Northern Ireland. The words are by Cathal MacGarvey (1866–1927) from Ramelton, County Donegal. The tune is traditional, and may be known as "Dives and Lazarus" or (as a hymn tune) "Kingsfold".

The melody was also used in an Irish folk song called "My Love Nell".[2] The lyrics of "My Love Nell" tell the story of a young man who courts a girl but loses her when she emigrates to America.[3] The only real similarity with "Star of the County Down" is that Nell too comes from County Down. This may have inspired MacGarvey to place the heroine of his new song in Down as well. MacGarvey was from Donegal.

"The Star of the County Down" uses a tight rhyme scheme. Each stanza is a double quatrain, and the first and third lines of each quatrain have an internal rhyme on the second and fourth feet: [aa]b[cc]b. The refrain is a single quatrain with the same rhyming pattern.

The song is sung from the point of view of a young man who chances to meet a charming lady by the name of Rose (or Rosie) McCann, referred to as the "star of the County Down". From a brief encounter the writer's infatuation grows until, by the end of the ballad, he imagines himself marrying the girl.

The song usually begins with the opening verse:

Near Banbridge town, in the County Down,
One morning last July
Down a boreen green came a sweet cailín,
And she smiled as she passed me by

Read - Finished Reading: The Celtic World by Jennifer Paxton (The Great Courses)
When you hear the word “Celtic,” which images come to mind? These days it could easily be Braveheart, kilts, leprechauns, and St. Patrick’s Day. However, since the surge of interest and pride in Celtic identity since the 19th century, much of what we thought we knew about the Celts has been radically transformed. From the warriors who nearly defeated Julius Caesar to Irish saints who took on the traits of Celtic deities, get to know the real Celts.

In The Celtic World, discover the incredible story of the Celtic-speaking peoples, whose art, language, and culture once spread from Ireland to Austria. This series of 24 enlightening lectures explains the traditional historical view of who the Celts were, then contrasts it with brand-new evidence from DNA analysis and archeology that totally changes our perspective on where the Celts came from. European history and culture have been profoundly affected by the Celts, from the myth of King Arthur to the very map of the United Kingdom, where the English confronted the peoples of the “Celtic Fringe.”

With a wealth of historical expertise, Professor Jennifer Paxton, Director of the University Honors Program and Clinical Assistant Professor of History at The Catholic University of America, guides you through each topic related to Celtic history with approachability and ease as you unearth what we once thought it meant—and what it may actually mean—to be Celtic. Professor Paxton’s engaging, often humorous delivery blends perfectly with the facts about the Celts to uncover surprising historical revelations. The ancient Celts are very much alive in the literary and artistic traditions that their descendants have both preserved and very deliberately revived. All facets of Celtic life, past and present, are addressed by Professor Paxton, who demonstrates a masterful knowledge and carefully separates fact from myth at every turn.

Brief review

I loved the first 3/4ths the most for their density and my lack of general familiarity. The end was a bit less dense and went to quickly. Overall this was a great introduction with a lot of cultural sensitivity and nuance. I really appreciate some of the modern coverage and overview which is sometimes difficult to find without a lot of additional political baggage.

Perhaps I missed it in the introduction, but it would have been nice to have a bit more of Dr. Paxton’s personal background. It wasn’t until late in the series that she mentioned growing up in Ireland and being “forced” to learn Irish in school. A bit more on her background and biases would have been nice to have, though generally her love for the subject and her general objective balance seems to shine through.

She did a particularly good job of highlighting some of the cultural highlights rooted in falsehoods or popularized writing which isn’t historically correct. She seems to give a lot of balance to prior historical research and broad views versus more current scholarship.