The family lived in New York from 1841 to 1844 and in New Orleans from 1844 to 1849, then returned to Portsmouth. Elias Aldrich died of cholera on a Mississippi River steamboat at Memphis on 6 October 1849. Since his father did not leave enough money to finance a college education, at age sixteen Aldrich accepted a position as a clerk in the New York Commission office of his uncle, Charles Frost.
Before his move to New York he had written verse, some of which had been published in the Portsmouth Journal. In New York he began to write poetry even more diligently, since the job of clerk did not keep him busy. He later said he wrote at least two lyrics daily under the "stimulus of the metropolis." He published a book of his poetry, The Bells, in 1855, the same year his sentimental poem "The Ballad of Babie Bell" appeared in the Journal of Commerce and was reprinted by newspapers across the country. Aldrich resigned his clerkship to devote himself to a literary career and was soon hired as junior literary critic of the Evening Mirror.
Within a few months he became a subeditor for Nathaniel Parker Willis and George Pope Morris's Home Journal, a post once held by Edgar Allan Poe.
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