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William Caldwell Family Antrim

Antrim

I am searching for my great-great-great grandparents, William Caldwell and wife Mary, maiden name unknown who immigrated from Ireland circa 1790 and settled in Pennsylvania, USA.

William Caldwell's date of birth is 18 May 1763. He and Mary married in 1790. All ten of their children were born in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, the oldest son, John born in 1971.

They attended a Presbyterian church after moving to Erie, Pennsylvania so I believe they were protestant but not necessarily Presbyterian. They may have been Church of England. The church they attended was the first church of any kind founded in northwestern Pennsylvania in 1811 by Reverend Robert Reid, D.D., who came from Belfast to the U.S. in 1810.

William Caldwell and his family traveled with Josiah Foster/Forster and his family to Erie, Pennsylvania. John Foster/Forster was also born in Antrim in 1675. The Fosters were members of the Church of England. They left Ireland in 1725, way before the Caldwell family did, and settled in southeast Pennsylvania where they met William Caldwell and subsequently settled in Erie, Pennsylvania.

The earliest census record I can find for William and Mary Caldwell in the USA is 1840, and he died shortly after.

I plan a visit to Northern Ireland in September 2018 and would like to find where William and Mary Caldwell came from. I hired a genealogist from Ulster to search for me, and he did without finding any reference to the Caldwell family. He has no recommendations for me to search when I get to Antrim as he already searched PRONI for the years 1760-1770 for marriage and birth records and found none.

I am looking for advice. Thanks in advance.

margaretcaldwe…

6 replies

Hi Margaret,

I couldn't find the marriage or baptism record on www.rootsireland.ie/ but wonder if this might be a sibling of William's?

Name:Thomas CaldwellDate of Birth:
Date of Baptism:12-Jul-1762Address:
Parish/District:ROSEMARY ST PRESBYTERY, BELFASTGender:MaleCountyCo. Antrim
Denomination:Presbyterian
Father:William Caldwell

No address provided of course but the father's name & religion are encouraging

Does the birth record you have give a parish?

As you have all of William's children's names, can we apply the Irish naming pattern?

Col 

ColCaffIrelandXO Volunteer

I would add a word of caution. Researching in Ireland in the 1700s is notoriously difficult due to the lack of records. If the family were Presbyterian, you should know that there were something like 200 Presbyterian churches in Co Antrim in the mid 1700s. Only 10 of those have any records for the 1700s. (Belfast Rosemary St is obviously one of them). If you know that your family came from Belfast then this may be the right family, but if they came from elsewhere in the county (as statistically is quite likely) then few records exist. There’s always a danger of seizing on the only record you find, saying “this must be it.”  Not necessarily so.

If you look at the 1901 census for Co. Antrim there are over 600 people named Caldwell/Calwell & Colwell. Spread fairly evenly across the county.

Usually, unless your family was particularly wealthy or famous, you may not find any record of them for the 1600s or 1700s. DNA testing is sometimes the only way of finding a link.

Caldwell is a common Scottish surname and so your ancestors probably arrived in Ireland in the 1600s which is when the main settlement of Scots occurred. Some 100,000 (about 10% of the entire Scottish population) moved to Ireland at that time.

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Thank you both for your checking in rootsireland, your advice, and your perspective. It really helps me to understand the "needle in a haystack" nature of my search. I do have some information that William Caldwell came from Belfast, although its from an old family history that someone else researched a couple of generations ago, so I don't have documentation for that. But, its interesting that the Presbyterian church they attended here in northwestern Pennsylvania, the very first church established here in 1811, was founded by a Presbyterian minister who came from Belfast in 1810. Maybe just a coincidence, maybe not.  I will definitely research Thomas Caldwell, son of William Caldwell, and apply the Irish naming patterns using the children's names, and see what I come up with. By 1901, there were a lot of Caldwell's in Co. Antrim. I know they were not wealthy or famous. I had my DNA test done and uploaded the raw data results to several other sites, and did have a couple of matches on MyHeritage.com from Ireland, however, I don't see a common ancestor when looking at their trees.  I am taking a DNA class here to learn how to decipher what the matches mean and how I can learn more. My next step may be to ask my brother to take a Y-DNA test to trace our paternal line, and possibly find something more concrete there. I believe my ancestors were originally Scottish, because when they came to Pennsylvania they settled in a Scots-Irish community in southwest Pennsylvania at first. I have no idea how to go that far back. My main interest is tracing them in Ireland at this point, and that seems very difficult. I appreciate the help that both of you have given me. Have a wonderful day.

 

 

margaretcaldwe…

Margaret,

Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them and, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results to them for no fee.

The North of Ireland Family History Society are running an Ulster DNA project and can offer FTDNA testing kits at a reduced price.  http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).

Presbyterianism was brought to Ireland by Scots settlers. It was established in Scotland in the 1500s and taken around the world by migrating Scots. Belfast was pretty well built by Scots in the 1600s and 1700s. In the 1770s, when the first Roman Catholic church was opened in Belfast, there were only 300 Catholics in the city. The rest were Scottish Presbyterians, plus some English & Welsh.  So if your family have a Scottish surname, were Presbyterian and lived in or around Belfast you have 3 strong pointers to them being of Scottish origins (as is the majority of the population of Co. Antrim). But, other than through DNA, you won’t trace the family back to Scotland. Apart the big estate owners, there are no lists of the people who moved to Ireland in the 1600s, and almost no other relevant records in either Scotland or Ireland to identify most of them. With some names and places, you can point to where people probably came from. For example, Co. Fermanagh was heavily settled by people from the Scottish Borders, and where you find common Border surnames like Armstrong, Henderson, Elliott, Trotter in that part of Ireland you can say they probably came from that area in Scotland. But for Belfast its much harder. Most of the settlers came from the Lowlands and the Borders. Few were from the Highlands, we do know that.

 

 

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

Thanks again for the background history on Belfast and County Antrim being primarily Presbyterian. That makes even more sense now. I have suspected that my Caldwell ancestors were originally from Scotland, but this provides more evidence that its a fact.   I have uploaded my raw DNA results to Family Tree DNA, but have gotten very few results so far. I will check out the Ulster DNA project and, perhaps, have my brother take a DNA test there. I actually have gotten more matches with the myheritage.com DNA test, but nothing conclusive yet.  I appreciate your sharing your email address on my other message board, "Marshall" and will be contacting you shortly. Thanks again Elwyn.

 

margaretcaldwe…

Are you still looking for info on the Caldwell's if so please contact me at yolliez@cox.net

yolliez@cox.net

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