 By the summer of 1890 over 3,600 people were residents of Blocton and products from the companies' mines and ovens were being sold to customers throughout the Southeast and parts of Latin America.In addition to his many business interests, Aldrich pursued a lifelong fascination with shell collecting, eventually amassing one of the largest amateur collections of his time, partly by purchase and partly by collecting in person.In the 1890s he joined a "Shell Syndicate" to support naturalists Herbert Huntington Smith and Amelia W. (Daisy) Smith, who collected freshwater and terrestrial mollusks in Alabama and Georgia.