This has been posted before in one form or another but I will re-run the particulars especially for Rozanne:

This is a pet theme of David Caldwell of Manitoba and I.

David's family and mine have lived for generations within stone-throwing distance of each other in the Riccarton area just across the River Irvine from Kilmarnock. We have never met but our families probably knew one another in the past. We don't seem to be related - at least for four or five or even more generations. My family left Scotland when I was six years old.

David's family can be linked back anciently to the property of Annanhill which is on the western boundary of Kilmarnock and is now a golf course. In later generations David's family was associated with the farm of Inchgotrick SSW of Riccarton just off the road to Prestwick.

David will confirm, but I think that his family were "always" farmers and I would venture that they would consider themself in the class of freeholding laird.

My family can be traced back to a coalmining family in the Parish of St Quivox around 1780. I think they worked the pits of John Taylor and company at Wallacetown. There was a likely ancestor for my family in the form of a farmer: John Caldwell of Dalmilling right next to Wallacetown. If so he would have had to have been a grandfather or more likely a GGrandfather of my earliest proved ancestor.

The fact that our family moved on to Old Rome when the coal seams at Wallacetown ran out probably indicates a desire to move to a new mine rather than a return to the place where they came from. I have a possible clue that the wife: Janet Guthrie was born at Irvine but I don't know where the husband: Alan Caldwell was born.

At the time coal mining was in demand and there were a lot of pits being opened. It was the start of the industrial revolution and younger sons of farmers could make more money mining that they could on farms. Farms were being consolidated and improved and the demand for lime to improve the soil meant an even bigger demand for coal used to burn it. Coal was king and the miner's conditions better than on the farm. Miner's were offered all sorts of inducements to leave one pit and go to another and it is recorded that John Taylor would send a man with a cart to move a family to his pit. Most mines of any standing would have miner's rows of houses to give accommodation to the mining families. At the time these would have been regarded as better than what the families were used to on the farms.

In the space of 50 years there were so many mines, seams were getting harder to work, the miner's families were prolific, "cheap" labour from Ireland and the Highlands had been encouraged, wages were reduced, and the "model" miner's rows turned into horrible slums. Coalmining eventually lost its initial glamour but it became harder to get back out of the industry. Those that could did.

A bit of a side-track, but persevere with me

Sufficient that the Caldwell farmers were everywhere in an area from close by Riccarton and just across the Irvine River at Klmarnock but concentrated mainly on the south bank through to the coast then sweeping in an arc along the coast through Monkton, Prestwick, Coylton, incland to Dalmellington and Straiton (where they are recorded as merchants as well) then down to Kirkmichael, Maybole and Kirkoswald in Carrick. There they seem to have stopped.

The Caldwell's in the Paisley/Kilbarchan area were well-known as weavers. The Maybole area and also the upper Irvine valley area were well-known weaving areas. This was usually done in the home on hand looms. Hand loom weavers were the "aristocrats" of the trades and earned fairly good money. On the coming of the machine age this occupation died a fearful death. It was in trouble before the end of the 1700's but the Napoleonic Wars kept them going a while longer. When the wars ended in 1815 it was the death-knell of handloom weaving and it was "starvation wages". So it is quite possible that our family were not farmers but weavers.

Just setting the scene

My immediate family at GGrandfather level ended up living at a farm adjoining "Inchgotrick" known as "Wee Inchgotrick". My GGrandfather and his family were just living there as they were miners. David Caldwell's relations were farming "Inchgotrick" next door. Just down the road was "Peace and Plenty", a miner's row where the family of Janet Wilson my GGrandmother lived. I don't know who else lived at "Wee Inchgotrick" but perhaps my GGrandfather was just starting to "come good" (he died a wealthy man) and he tried his hand at farming as well. He certinly had plenty of children to help. From details I have found I know that he was still listed as a coalminer when most of his elder children were born. If he farmed anything on "Wee Inchgotrick" it was certainly only an income supplement. The fact that he might have been farming at all makes me wonder if farming was a tradition then still not too far away in our family.

David tells me that "Wee Inchgotrick" was the older farm and was formerly called "Inchgotrick Mains" meaning that it was a desmesne farm for a castle. David thinks that there may have formerly been a castle on the site of "Treesbanks House" and that this would have been a Wallace Castle.

Riccarton is named after Ricardus Wallensis who was granted land in that area by Walter Fitzalan. The name Wallace has come from Walays, Waleys or Wallensis meaning Welshman - either from Wales or form local British stock.

The Wallays built Castles at Riccarton and Craigie and, as David thinks, also at Treesbanks in between. Their lands were a great crescent on the south bank of the Irvine from half way to Galston around by Craigie Hill and back to the Irvine. Across the river on the north bank the Boyd family had similar territory. Of course the Boyd's are reputed to be descended from Walter's brother. Walter Fitzalan himself held all the land of Kyle Stewart from the River Irvine to the River Ayr. This was the original landholding of the Stewart ancestors and the Renfrew lands came later. It would only be natural for the Stewarts to move some of their sub-tenants to the Renfrew lands and the Wallace's and Caldwell's pop up there as well - just as surely.

On authority of "William Wallace: Brave Heart" by James Mackay it appears that Wallace's Grandfather was from Crosshouse just west of Kilmarnock. Running from Crosshouse in an easterly direction we first pass through Annandale then Annanhill and we are in Kilmarnock itself all in a journey of less than two miles. Annandale of course is the stuff of Caldwell legends inthe USA and shares its name with a much more extensive territory down near the Solway Firth. Annandale near Kilmarnock is much harder to find on a map. As is Ellerslie, adjoining the Caldwell property of Annanhill. The folk of Kilmarnock "know" that this is the birthplace of William Wallace and that Wallace spent most of his youth growing up in the Irvine Valley area around Riccarton - this is the area of the major Wallace holdings. Although his father also held lands off the Stewart's at Auchenbothie in Renfrew it was a lack of map-reading skills that led historians in the 1800's to select the much easier to find "Elderslie" near Paisley as the Wallace birthplace. Patriotic fervour has turned "Elderslie" into a tourist mecca and many Wallace relics are to be found there that, whilst old, were established centuries after Wallace died.

Right across the river from Ellerslie we have Caprington Castle of the Cunnighame family. I don't know who held it in Wallace's days but it might be worth checking. Next is Todriggs and Earlston, anciently Caldwell farms. Next to the South of course are the two Inchgotrick farms and above them the Wallace heights of Craigie.

From Todriggs through Dundonald (the Stewart seat) to he coast Caldwell farms regularly dot the landscape.

We have a solid block of Caldwell properties that fringe the Wallace possessions but don't actually seem to occur WITHIN the Wallace lands (perhaps excepting Inchgotrick). This seems to indicate that the Caldwell's might not have been sub-tenants of the Wallace's but direct sub-tenant's of the Stewart's of similar standing to that of the Wallace's.

To my way of thinking the Caldwell's were petty farm-lairds who probably existed before fuedalism and were confirmed in their holdings by swearing allegience to their new overlords. The Wallace himself might have been a local magnate with extensive holdings his scattered junior neighbours were just the lowland welsh without surnames and it would be easy to ascribe a generic name to this type of little laird when it came to the record books.

Murray says that the lands of Riccarton were granted to Ricardus Wallensis and the town was named after him. Strawhorn on the other hand says that Riccarton was ganted to Richard Loccart, Symington to Simon Loccart, and Stevenston to Stephen Loccart. The river that runs through Paisley from the Caldwell-populated Lochwinnoch Valley is the Black Cart Water, the White Cart that joins it runs westward into the Glasgow suburbs where it picks up the Leven Water coming from the Caldwell Estate of the Mures.

Loccart might be easy to associate with the Lockhart family. But they are supposed to have taken the name at a later time - the Loccart's obtained their land-grants directly from the Stewart's and de Morville at the dawn of fuedalism when surnames were just starting.

Just a few more ideas to ponder: Our close association side-by-side with the Wallace family and a vague idea worth exploring that the Loccart's were from the Cart Water area. Was Richard Loccart the same person as Ricardus Wallensis?

Tom