John
I am trying to seed a discussion on some original thoughts on the Caldwell Family. You have done well to debunk some of the wilder myths I have seen generally circulating in the US. Obviously someone had a very fertile imagination and those listening to him/her hadn't realised that they had gone "ga-ga" and it has been repeated without question for generations.
With due respect for the researchers in the US - very few of them go back past their original ancestor who arrived from overseas. When they go back further it is usually to Ireland.
Ireland was probably just a "stop-over" destination for some generations after originally leaving Scotland.
Most were impoverished and left Ireland for the USA in tumultuous times. They most likely had little time of inclination to pay attention to their family history but they clung to their religion.
There is very little specific information generally available about Caldwell's of note and what there is is repeated over and over again - without anything else to cling to it is easy to see oneself as being descendent from the same remote ancestor.
The fact is that there are mentions of Caldwell's in the Mauchline area in the 1500's. Paisley as early as the 1200's. In the English Midlands in the 1500's. Around Kilmarnock, Ayr, Irvine, Straiton (as we know :-)), Maybole, Lochwinnoch, Paisley, Beith, Glasgow, etc in the 1600's.
The late Lesley Anne Gordon (herself a Caldwell) painstakingly made extracts of old wills and I now have many of them: for example that of John Caldwell "in McDonnalie" died 1615; Robert Caldwell of Nether Hessilhead died 1619. This is reasonably serious stuff and goes beyond the "can you help me locate Uncle Sylvestor" type of research.
I also do not claim to have any links to powerful ancient Scottish Caldwell ancestors - my earliest found ancestors were coalminers - generally regarded as the lowest of the low. ... but perhaps there was a black sheep there somewhere ... :-)