The son of Gideon Burdick and his wife Catherine Robertson. Alden was the fifth of seven children and the youngest of three sons.

He was an early convert to the Church, for by 1834 he was already a member and a volunteer to accompany the Prophet Joseph Smith on Zions Camp, the venture to succor the saints in Missouri. It seems that the conversion was a family affair for his older brother Thomas was called as a clerk and later as a bishop. His brother Elias died in Pleasant Grove, Utah and thus also may be assumed to have been a member.

Alden was married to Jerusha Parks but the date is in doubt. The Ancestral File gives the date of the marriage as 1845 in Nauvoo, Illinois but the oldest of Alden and Jerusha's eleven children was born about 1824 with younger children being born along over the years. It is inconcievable that Alden and Jerusha were not married all those years. The Ancestral File may be in error or it might be referring to sealing in the Nauvoo Temple which took place years after their civil marriage. It seems far more likely that Alden married Jerusha about 1823 when he was about twenty.

As has been mentioned, Alden was a member of Zions Camp. A year later in February of 1835 he was called to become a Seventy and a member of the the First Quorum of the Seventy. Although the First Quorum is specificaly designated by the Lord as a quorum having equal authority with the First Presidency and the Twelve, there is no evidence that they ever functioned as a governing quorum in the Kirtland-Missouri-Nauvoo era.

We may assume that Alden remained faithful as he is not mentioned in the histories as having participated in any apostacy and he died in Nauvoo, Illinois.