David Sloan Aldridge is the mystery brother. Born about 1858, he was Robert and Mary Eliza Balkcum Aldridge‘s fourth son and fifth child and appears with them in the Wayne County censuses of 1860, 1870 and 1880. By 1896, David, also called Sloan, had married Lillie Uzzell, though no license has been found. The couple filed three deeds for real estate purchases in Goldsboro and Grantham township in the late 1890s.  In 1900, David and Lillie (called Dilley in the census) are listed in Goldsboro, and he received his share of his father’s estate in 1902. And then he disappeared.

Goldsboro Weekly Argus, 1 September 1904.

I have not found David S. Aldridge in the 1910 census or after. Until I found this article last night, I had no record of him beyond Robert Aldridge’s estate settlement. The lots offered at auction were jointly purchased by David and his wife. In 1904, after his wife’s death, David sold his share in the property to Lillie Uzzell’s sole heir, her adult son, and, after this notice was published, disappears from the record again.