William Lloyd Riddle, Sr. was born on September 7, 1857, in Wake County, North Carolina. Lloyd was for thirty-three years a pattern maker for an iron works company in Wilmington, North Carolina. His experience in that line of work drove him towards labor reform, and he became active with labor organizations like the Knights of Labor and the Allied Trades Council. By the time of his death in 1934, he was remembered as a "militant trade unionist" who was "one of the grand old men of labor." He died in Wilmington, North Carolina, on December 19, 1934.