I am a great-great-great-great grandson of Rev. David Caldwell and his wife, Rachel Craighead, and blood descendant of David’s son, Rev. Samuel Craighead Caldwell, and grandson, Rev. John McKnitt Madison Caldwell, as well as Rev. Alexander Craighead and Rev. Thomas Craighead, the father and grandfather of Rachel Craighead, all prominent figures in Colonial America history.
Rev. David Caldwell captured my interest because his life appears so honorable and fulfilling. During a time of social and cultural dislocation and economic turmoil scarcely matched in American history, he inspired confidence and earned the trust of others. He found greatness by doing good. Friends of religion heralded his work among Presbyterians, and friends of liberty cheered his contributions to their cause. As a Pennsylvania pioneer, Princeton pupil, Presbyterian pastor, Piedmont professor, and pious patriot, he was wholly American. His incurable rebelliousness against British tyranny was American. Above all, he was an American in his curious mixture of piety and politics, his mingling of religion and revolution, his reconciliation of revelation and reason, and his rejection of a life of preferment, promotion, and privilege.
The published biographies of Rev. David Caldwell (1725-1824) provide little information about his parents and youth. (E. W. Caruthers, 1793-1865. Sketch of the Life And Character of the Rev. David Caldwell, D.D, near Sixty Years Pastor of the Churches of Buffalo and Alamance, Greensborough, NC. Printers: Swaim and Sherwood. 1842, p. 10. Library of Congress Subject Heading: David Caldwell, 1725-1824. Ethel Stephens Arnett, David Caldwell/Ethel Stephens Arnett. Greensboro, NC Media, Inc. (distributed by Straughan’s Book Shop). 1976. Published by Junior League of Greensboro, Inc. Library of Congress Heading: David Caldwell, 1725-1824; Presbyterian Church -- Clergy -- Biography; Clergy -- North Carolina -- Biography; North Carolina -- History -- Regulator Insurrection, 1766-1771).

Neither biography mentioned that when Andrew acquired fee title to his farm, he spelled his surname Calwell. They also did not note that when his second son was baptized in 1735 in Glasgow, the surname was spelled Calwall.

The earliest record of any Andrew Calwall are Scottish church records listed by Latter Day Saints Family History genealogical index showing that he was born about 1579 in Glasgow and married Janet Muir. Muir is one of the variant spellings for the Mure family residing near Glasgow, at what has been known as the Mure of Caldwell Estate for over five centuries, and currently included with Caldwell Parish at Uplawmoor, East Renfrewshire, Scotland. At the webpage, caldwellgenealogy.com, John and Tom Caldwell, and others, have published in depth research relating to numerous Caldwells by surname (with variant spellings) residing in this region and Ayrshire in the medieval ages, perhaps as early as the 12th century, and certainly by the 13th century. Surnames of gentry based upon their possessions were first required by Scottish King Malcolm (Canmore).

In Caruthers biography, he states that the Rev. David Caldwell's father was a reputable and prosperous farmer. Ethel Stephens Arnett’s biography of David Caldwell describes Andrew and Martha as "successful, respectable farmers." It struck me that growing profitable crops for nearby expanding markets would have enabled Andrew and Martha to escape subsistence farming and the hardship associated with it. Increasing prosperity and the ability of an individual through perseverance to elevate his social status likely contributed to David's positive mental outlook.

All available historical evidence indicates that David's parents were a far cry from the depiction of the lowland Scots living near the England/Scotland boundary as rootless rovers, cattle thieves, highway robbers, and illiterate peasants, as described by British Lord Thomas Macauley in his famous History of England (1850).

The Caldwell Family Newsletter indicates that Andrew Caldwell has not been linked specifically to any other Caldwell migrant to America. (Editor, Marilyn Janda, mjanda@mindspring.com)

Andrew and Martha would have been among the first white settlers. There were about 2,660 settlers in 1725 in the region that became Lancaster County in 1729. (Lancaster Co. Pennsylvania, A History, 4 vols. Ed. H.M.J. Klein (Lewis Historical Pub. Co. New York and Chicago: 1924); see generally, Solanco Heritage, History of Southern Lancaster County, 1729-1991. Devon, PA: W.T. Cooke Pub., 1990.)

I have my own conjecture, derived not from specific evidence, but from typical and ordinary events of that era, relating to Andrew and Martha.
The day is June 22, 1724. Andrew looked forward to the religious revival meeting. He did not often get together with others his age. The meeting would take place near the longest day of the year. Hundreds of families would gather together to listen to Presbyterian evangelists. There would be more than 17-1/2 hours between sunrise and sunset. A number of stern ministers would hector the attendees about the dangers of idle talk rather than devout reading of the scripture, but afterwards, there would always be hours of drinking, singing, dancing, and story telling, and for some, loss of their virginity. Although only 12 years of age, Andrew had already taken an interest in girls. He hoped to see Martha again. She had just turned 13, and had flirted with him.
Soon after Martha became pregnant, Andrew and Martha took their marriage vows in a private home. Neither had access to a family Bible to record the event. Marriage in the local church was out of the question. Martha's parents had no money to pay for the church services. Human bones protruded through the dirt floor of the church.. Water dripped from the leaky roof. There was no place to sit and no kitchen to prepare a meal for the guests. Beggars beseeched anyone who neared the church for whatever they could spare. Bandits lay in wait on roads for anyone who dared travel alone or unarmed to church.
Among the early pioneer settlers in Pennsylvania a high proportion of women were pregnant when they got married; even if they were not, if the baby was born before the normal term, they were considered guilty of fornication. Pennsylvania Births: Lancaster County, 1723-1777, by John T. Humphrey, 1997 (hardcover). Accordingly, the parents often were evasive or lied to others as to when they got married.
David and Martha decided to immigrate to America before their child was born. Such a relocation would not require a certification of good character from the local minister and no fine or penance would be due the local kirk. The voyage would have been perilous. Barbary pirates roamed the coasts of America, Scotland, and Ireland, and murdered or placed into slavery thousands of sea travlers. Geographer Richard Hakluyt’s book, Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America, printed stories of shipwreck, starvation and cannibalization. Rats, lice, stench, vomiting, many kinds of seasickness, scurvy, dysentery and heat constipation afflicted the passengers. Children who had not previously acquired immunity to smallpox often died at sea during the voyage. Survivors carried the virus to America, where it devastated the Native Americans.
It is unknown whether Andrew Caldwell arrived in America as an indentured servant. The cost of the voyage was between £3 and £4, and the daily wages of a laborer usually about one shilling Many tenant farmers from Scotland and North Ireland paid for their passages by serving four years as an indentured servant. Pennsylvania employers typically offered the best terms: After service had been completed, the former servant was granted fifty to eighty acres of land, an axe, two hoes and two suits of clothing. Ironically those seeking freedom in America achieved it by becoming servants. Indentured servitude in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania was overseen chiefly by merchants rather than by land agents. The merchants needed craftsmen and tradesmen (e.g., carpenters, bricklayers, masons, blacksmiths, tailors, coopers, hatters, silversmiths, weavers, shoemakers, barbers, butchers, brushmakers, etc.) for the burgeoning city of Philadelphia and required unskilled labor to load flax seed, lumber, rum, and other products for export to Great Britain. The pre-arranged specifics of the indenture were reinforced by colonial law that sought to prevent abuses. In 1700, for example, Pennsylvania stipulated "That no servant, bound to serve his or her time in this province, or counties annexed, shall be sold or disposed of to any person residing in any other province or government, without the consent of the said servant, and two justices of the peace of the county wherein he lives or is sold."
Many of the first people leaving from Glasgow to tobacco-growing regions abutting Chesapeake Bay were young single males, salaried sojourners rather than family settlers. Upon their return to Glasgow, they would have shared with Clyde River Valley inhabitants their observations about the advantages of migrating to America. (D.W. Meing, The Shaping of America, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986, Vol. 1, p. 158.)
In Renfrewshire as well as in North Ireland many landowners were enclosing and consolidating their lands at the close of a lease and evicting the tenants, or offering new leases double or triple the old rents that made tenant farming unprofitable. The growing textile industry had increased the demand for local wool, and the raising of sheep required enclosure.
Presbyterian ministers screamed from the pulpit that the Episcopal clergymen and landlords were screwers of the tithe and rackers of rent. A common theme was that God had appointed a country for the Presbyterians to dwell in (naming America) and "desire them to depart thence, where they will be freed from the bondage of Egypt and transported to the land of Canaan."
Many Scot and Scot-Irish were migrating to the frontier about 50 miles west of Philadelphia, following in the path of fur-trappers who had developed the first trading posts along the Susquehanna River.
The immigrants landed mostly at Boston, Philadelphia, New Castle or New Brunswick, Delaware (then a part of Pennsylvania), and Charleston. Comparatively few entered the country by way of Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, or Vermont.

In Massachusetts, a law of 1700 forbid the admission of the "impotent, lame, or otherwise infirm, or [those] likely to be a charge to the place." It also obliged ship captains, "under penalty of £5 for every name that was omitted," to provide the local custom house with the name, description and "circumstances so far as he knows," of their passengers. From 1722, captains also had to guarantee that their passengers would not become "manifold inconveniences and [a] great charge" on the local community and to transport them out of the province if they did. The selectmen of Boston also took bonds from Irish immigrants "to save the town harmless from all charges" and on occasion, used the money to deport those who were being "maintained at the cost of the province," back to Ireland.

The first large group of immigrants was Scot-Irish who settled in Donegal Township, Pennsylvania, around 1710. (See generally, Wayland F. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1981, p. 51.) In 1711, a Presbyterian Society formed in Drumore Township, Pennsylvania, meeting in the homes of settlers. Reportedly Drumore was named for Druim Muir, a fortified location in County Down, Ireland, rather than Drumore, a village near Campbeltown, Scotland, where the channel separating Scotland and Ireland is at its narrowest. (H. M. Klein, Lancaster County Pennsylvania, A History, Lewis Historical Pub. Co., 1924, p. 93.)
The second large immigration to this frontier occurred in 1717-1719, and the third during the years 1725-1729. These immigrations to Pennsylvania occurred before the Pennsylvania Privy Council passed the Servant Act in 1729, requiring that detailed passenger lists had to be entered at the Philadelphia custom house and bonds posted for the good behavior of the immigrants. This may explain why there is no known passenger list including the names of Andrew and Martha Caldwell.
A minister of Ulster, writing to a friend in Scotland, in 1718, lamented the desolation occasioned in that region "by the removal of several of our brethren to the American plantations. Not less than six ministers have demitted their congregations, and great numbers of the people go with them." Ten years later Archbishop Boulter wrote to the English Secretary of State respecting the extensive immigration to America: "The humor has spread like a contagious distemper; and the worst is that it affects only Protestants, and reigns chiefly in the north."(Rev. James Geddes Craighead, D.D., The Craighead Family: A Genealogical Memoir, 1658-1876, Philadelphia, Sherman & Co., 1876, p. 23.)
William Penn had paid the natives to relocate west of the Susquehanna River and let the land to the east of the river be settled by white settlers. As a Quaker, Penn appreciated the value of having Scots and Scot-Irish pioneers serving as buffer for the more urbane Quakers who would get preferential selection of lands closer to Philadelphia.
Ship masters, factors and agents roamed the country, tempting and ensnaring people to migrate to America. The "richer sort" were being assured that "their posterity will be for ever happy," "the poorer sort" were being "deluded" by accounts "of the great wages given there to laboring men."
Andrew and Martha's first son, David, was born on March 22, 1725, in what is now known as Drumore Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In March 1725, the Drumore residents already had erected a jailhouse, tavern, and churches of several denominations. Unlike Philadelphia, the township had no newspaper and no paved streets. Lancaster County resembled the lowland country from which Andrew and Martha had emigrated--rolling hills and limestone plains, suitable for both crops and livestock, with dependable rainfall year round, high water tables, and numerous artesian wells and springs. In both regions the alluvial soil was productive and prevailing winds turned the windmills that powered the sawmills. The biggest difference were the immense forests in Lancaster County, that went on as far as the eye could see.
Andrew's land contained over 300 acres, well recessed from any waterway by which Pirates could come ashore. The first year Andrew built a lean to, then a round log cabin, with an axe-hewn plank floor, rather than mill-shaped lumber. He girdled the trunks of trees, so that the leaves and needles would fall and let the sunlight reach the corn that he had planted.

In 1725, David had not yet acquired title to the farm land. This was true of many first generation settlers of Lancaster County, who were known to seize the land first, and then negotiate purchase of a fee title after they had saved the money. Mortgages were unavailable to pioneer settlers. The land office was closed until 1732 following William Penn's death. After Penn’s heirs reopened the land office and raised the price of land in Lancaster County in 1732 from £ 10 to £ 15 per hundred acres, many Scot and Scots-Irish families decided to move west into the Ohio valley, and south through the Cumberland Valley and Shenandoah Valley to North Carolina, and beyond, where land was much cheaper and less populated.

Movement of white settlers beyond the Susquehanna River provoked Indian hostilities that were significant by the 1730’s. (Henry Frank Eshelman, Lancaster County Indians, Lancaster, PA, 1908.) Worshipers went to church with the Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. "The settlers were obliged frequently to carry their rifles with them to their fields, as they turned up the virgin soil to receive the seed, or as they sought to gather the golden grain. And with all their precautions, they were oftentimes surprised while engaged in their peaceful occupations and murdered in cold blood, or what was more terrible still, reserved for protracted and cruel tortures." (Rev. James Geddes Craighead, The Craighead Family: A Genealogical Memoir, supra, p. 52.)

Andrew acquired a deed to his farm in 1742. James Logan, at that time Secretary of the Province, in writing of the Scots-Irish immigrants to Pennsylvania in 1724, states that they had generally taken up the southern lands near the Maryland boundary, and were "bold and indigent strangers, saying as their excuse, when challenged for titles, that we had solicited them for colonists and they had come accordingly. The other ways by which land could be obtained were by rent, grant from the crown, church congregation (the system favored in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and by the initial Presbyterian settlers at Alamance), head right system (land given to those who paid passage), and purchase of crown lands. The text of the warrants and sketch of the boundaries of the land are reproduced in the Caldwell Family Newsletter, Summer, 1982, pp. 10-12.

Because of the relative closeness of Philadelphia and Lancaster, and establishment of a road in the early 1740’s, Andrew Caldwell would have been able to drive any cattle and haul any crops to market with relative ease by then. A horse could carry twenty bushels of corn distilled into liquor, but only seven bushels of grain.
The soil and climate of Lancaster County is especially beneficial for the growing of corn. Corn would not have required as much labor as some other farm products. Corn was used chiefly to fatten swine.
For the first ten years of his life, David had no siblings. He would not attend a school until he was a teenager. Despite his isolation, he developed a gregarious, sociable personality that would serve him well for the rest of his life. Part of this may be to the influx of immigrants to Lancaster of all creeds, languages, skills, and interests. Lancaster County was to become one of the leading cosmopolitan areas in colonial America between 1725 and 1750. David's childhood taught him that the backcountry small American family farmers had interests distinct from those of the large plantation owners, shippers, bankers, and merchants.

Andrew and Martha would have had their daily lives subject to scrutiny by "kirk sessions" (local church courts).

"Kirk sessions dealt not only with matters of conscience and religion but also sought to discourage excesses of drunkenness and style of dress, fornication, oppressive taxation of the poor, deception in matters of buying and selling, and lewd behavior. The main offense heard by the kirk session was adultery and fornication.

"The kirk session also assumed responsibility for helping the deserving poor --the victims of old age and misfortune, the sick, the elderly and widows and fatherless but was strongly opposed to helping the idle and beggars. With this came a proposal for a national education scheme in Scotland to help educate the young and provide a teacher in every church. Free education for the poor would be reflected in time in a relatively high literacy among emigrants to America." (Brian Orr, Internet web page, History of Covenanter.)
"From these roots grew a respect for sobriety and industry, positive attitudes and sense of purpose." (Id.)
In general, the average Scot-Irish and Scots did not have the reputation of being as successful at farming as the German migrants and their descendants. Possibly some of the know-how of the German migrants to Lancaster County rubbed off on David, because later, he was to gain a reputation as one of the most successful farmers in the region where he was eventually to move, to present day Greensboro, North Carolina.
Andrew Caldwell died in 1757. On his tombstone, and in his last will and testament, his surname was spelled Caldwell. He has often been confused with another Andrew Caldwell, who married Ann Stewart and was born in 1692 or 1693. His father was Joseph Caldwell. This Andrew migrated from Ballibogan (Ballyboggan), Donegal County, about 1717. He died in 1752 in Pequea, Lancaster Co., PA. He was an innkeeper and an ancestor of John Caldwell Calhoun. This Andrew Caldwell is mentioned several times in the Orphan’s Court Abstracts of Lancaster County, Misc. Documents, 1742-1760. On September 4, 1742, he charged £5 10s for rum and beer, £1 for a coffin, and 5s for a grave, related to the funeral of a particular father whose orphaned child was placed in care of others.

Included in Ellis Evans, History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, vol. 2, 1883, available at the LDS Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, are the assessor's return of all the heads of households of Drumore Township, and their acreage, for the years 1759, 1769, and 1780. In 1759 Alexander Calwell is listed as having 300 acres. Only two others had more acreage. In 1769, Alexander and John Caldwell are listed as having 100 acres. The return for 1780 has them listed as owning 400 acres, the most anyone then owned in Drumore Township.

Although writing only of the churches known to have been attended by David Caldwell while growing up in Pennsylvania, Rev. E. W. Caruthers (1793-1865) implies that Andrew and Martha attended services at (1) the Donegal Township Presbyterian Church (organized 1719); (2) Pequea (pronounced Peek-way) Church, Salisbury Township, PA (whose first minister was Rev. Robert Smith, 1723-1793, father of Samuel Stanhope Smith, 1750-1819, President of Princeton College; and John Balir Smith, President of Union College; and (3) Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church (organized 1717) at Drumore Township, Lancaster County, PA. Andrew (and likely Martha) Caldwell was buried at Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church cemetery, where his gravestone still remains.

The first meetings at Chestnut Level were held by itinerant ministers, beginning in 1711. About 1717, a log church was built near Centerville (now Hensel) on a chestnut tree-covered plain, and may have been located at what is now Morrison Graveyard at Site 5. A second church was built on a site opposite of the old cemetery on the road to Hensel in 1729. The church's name was changed from Mt. Pleasant to Chestnut Level. The first appointed minister was John Thompson, in 1732, from Ireland, who served until 1744, at which time he migrated as a missionary to West Virginia and North Carolina. His successors at Chestnut Level were David Thom (1747-1752), Samuel Smith (1752-1771), and James Latta, who served as minister for the next three decades.. The Rev. Thompson authored several religious works (e.g., Explication of the Shorter Catechism, 1740), and ranked with Blair and Tennant. (Ellis Evans, History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1883, vol. 2, p. 794.) He was a hard-line "Old Side" minister.

While growing up in Lancaster County, David Caldwell came into contact with a number of prominent evangelists. These included the Rev. Thomas Craighead, who moved to Lancaster Co. in 1733, and was installed as pastor of the Pequea Presbyterian Church in September of that year. Another historically prominent pastor was tThomas Craighead's son, Rev. Alexander Craighead (David Caldwell’s future father-in-law). (E. H. Gillet, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1864.) Alexander Craighead was licensed by the Presbytery of Donegal Township, Lancaster County, on October 3, 1734, and installed as pastor of Middle Octarora Church in 1735, and at Rocky River Presbyterian Church, in what is now Cabarrus County, North Carolina, 1758-1766. David Caldwell also met Alexander Craighead’s mentor and close friend, Rev. George Whitefield. Whitefield roamed the frontier as a "circuit rider."( See, George Whitefield, A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield’s Journal from his Embarking after the Embargo to his Arrival at Savannah in Georgia, London, 1740.) He conducted many revival meetings beginning in and near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, attended by as many as 15,000 a day, as well as in North Carolina and brought about in David Caldwell a great awakening of religious piety and a desire to help others. (Charles H. Maxon, The Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies, Chicago, 1920.)

Whitefield was the most famous among a group of "spellbinders," a type of minister who sought to emphasize brotherhood and the plight of the poor. He could make people weep or tremble by the way he spoke. "Playing on fear and stirring passion, Whitefield harangued individuals into being empathetic, charitable, and socially responsible. "Whitefield was a fiery spark in the driest tinder." Jack Cady, The American Writer, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1999, p. 68. His message appealed to those who were alienated from their various churches and to the democratic-minded who responded to Whitefield's call for humanitarianism." (Web page, the Presbyterian Historical Society, 425 Lombard Street, Philadelphia PA 19147-1516. Telephone (215) 627-1852. Fax (215) 627-0509. [preshist@shrsys. hslc.org] The Society is a department of the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Society has a regional office located at P.O. Box 849, Montreat, North Carolina 28757. Telephone (828) 669-7061. Fax (828) 669-5369. [pcusadoh@ montreat.edu]. "[He] created a popular intercolonial movement, the first that stirred the people of several colonies on a matter of common emotional concern." Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait, N.Y. Knopf, 1971, p. 217.

The Great Awakening initiated by Revs. George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent and Jonathan Edwards has been described as the second reformation, restoring the terrors and consolation of Christianity to unchurched persons at a time of greater secularism and religious indifference. (Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait, supra, p. 218.) Whitefield critics have called the Great Awakening "the last gasp of the Middle Ages...a departure from a religion calling for study to a religion asking for cant." (Jack Cady, The American Writer, supra, p. 69.) Some 23 of his sermons survive. Gillies, John, 1712-1796, Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, M.A., late chaplain to the Right Honourable the Countess of Huntingdon. Comp. by the Rev. John Gillies, New York, Hodge and Shober, Microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. University of Microfilms (n.d.) (American Culture Series, Reel 371.7.)