: We agree again! I can only verify back to Joseph
: Caldwell of Westmoreland, Co., PA in the mid-1700s.
: Other than that, all I have to go on besides clues
: here and there are generations of my family before me
: stating that we "are Scotch-Irish", hence my
: research of Ireland and the Planter Caldwells looking
: for more clues to work my way to the middle.

I am much the same - I can trace back to about the late 1700's. I also have a great deal of information on the early (late 1400's to late 1600's) Scottish Caldwell's but thse are only what has been found and probably represent only a small percentage of the Caldwel's around at the time. There is a great gap through the Covenanting times when I suspect church records were not kept (or were destroyed).

: I don't think that all came from Ireland. I used to know
: a Caldwell here in Los Angeles who claimed Welch
: ancestory,

when our family lived in Wales the name was not common there

: and another who said his family was from
: Holland.

the Scots had a major trading link with Holland it was also the place where many of the attainted lairds went for refuge after the Pentland Hills Rising.

: Now, of course a lot of that comes down to
: "what years?", but for the most part, I
: don't think that Ireland was any sort of central exit
: point or staging area. I think there's more relativity
: to time and space as to when any line ventured out
: into the world.

"The Caldwells of Castle Caldwell" - I have a copy - is a good source of information on the conditions in Northern Ireland. Seems like most of the Caldwell immigrants to Australia came from Northern Ireland.

: I agree that there probably wasn't time for genealogy for
: the families of those times, but I'd disagree that all
: left due to poverty, although I'm sure that many did.

: With religion and politics being inseperable at the time,
: I'd venture to guess that many left religious
: persecution, or at least the constant battles over
: religion and all the tangents that go with it.

I believe that a lot of the Scots to the US were involved in the tobacco industry - many became wealthy planters. Glasgow was the european centre for imporing tobacco right up until the US Civil War and there were many "Tobacco Lords". When running the gauntlet became too hard many switched to trading sugar from the West Indies.

: Some of those going to America in the mid-1600s may have
: been captured in battle by Cromwell and shipped off
: into servitude. Some coming in the early 1700s may
: have just had enough fighting over religion and had
: lost too much to do it all over again in the same
: place. And some coming later may have been fleeing
: famine and poverty.

Cromwell did ship off a lot and one of the ships foundered off the Orkneys drowning the hapless cargo.
: Black sheep? I though all you Aussies were just Irish who
: got caught. lol....

: As for my line, the Jospeh which I go back to in America
: was a Quaker. I don't know if he became Quaker, which
: would be my (somewhat educated) guess as his son who I
: descend from was Presbyterian. Now, "my"
: Joseph's wife came from a long line of Quakers, and it
: seems that other men of my (extended)
: "family" switched religion a few times for
: women .

: For the most part, though, I come from a line of farmers.
: A true "three brothers" story, my great
: great grandfather and two of his brothers were early
: settlers of Iowa, and family members still own and
: farm the original 1855 family homestead.

: Maybe we can get Plunkett Caldwell from N.IRE to join in
: on this conversation. He's done considerable research
: on Ulster Caldwells for some years, and I'm sure would
: have a lot to add.
: