Rider, Alfred

   Alfred (sometimes spelled Alford) Rider was born around 1816 in Massachusetts. By 1850, he and his wife Melissa had migrated to Cohoes, NY, where he worked as a blacksmith who specialized in edged tools. Though he manufactured axes on his own, in the 1860s he was a foreman at the works of the Ten Eyck family. William J. Ten Eyck, son of Abraham Ten Eyck (of A.A. &T. Co fame) married one of Rider’s daughters. By the 1870s, Alfred had been hired on as a foreman at Isaiah Blood’s axe factory in Ballston Spa, and his family was residing in a home in Milton, just north of the factory. He would work there through the death of Blood and the conversion of that company to H. Knickerbacker & Co. and retired in 1890. He died in 1890 shortly after stopping work at the factory.