I am nearing completion of a book on Rev. David Caldwell. Here are the first few pages:

Chapter I -- A Light in the Wilderness

On March 3, 1768, "born-again" Rev. Hugh McAden installed 41 year old David Caldwell as minister of two Presbyterian congregations at Buffalo and Alamance deep in the Piedmont backcountry of North Carolina, in what is now Greensboro, North Carolina. The proud members of these congregations dwelled in humble log cabins. They raised fat pigs and lean children, harvested crops and hunted game, girdled trees and guzzled corn liquor. These salvation seekers split Sundays between scripture, sermons, sedition, and socializing. The reverent prayed for revelation, resurrection and resuscitation. Throughout the backcountry, consciousness-raising clergy confronted congregations complaining of creditors, courts, colonels, commissioners, councils, and corruption. Coin was scarce and bartering was common. David Caldwell would receive his pay more often in corn than currency. Despite its humbleness, the ministry provided David Caldwell a rich opportunity for his agenda, aura, and amiability to capture the attention, admiration and affection of people throughout the backcountry Piedmont region of North Carolina during his salutary struggle to save their souls and serve their society.

Within ten years Rev. David Caldwell was a leader of the anti-federalist Republican Party in North Carolina and among the first to speak at a North Carolina convention to determine whether North Carolina would vote to adopt the Federal Constitution that lacked a Bill of Rights that his fellow backcountry Piedmont farmers and he were determined to have. Although seemingly isolated on the frontier, he had joined an intercolonial movement that aided attainment of America's independence. During the Revolutionary War, British General Cornwallis offered a substantial bounty for his capture, £200, enough to buy hundreds of acres of good improved river bottom land. Rev. Caldwell was esteemed as the foremost educator in the south. Almost all of the Presbyterian ministers in the south during his lifetime were graduates of his Log College. At no other time in American history would religion more profoundly affect a greater multitude of those who were not especially devout.

David Caldwell's first step into history began in 1765 as a missionary on the Great Wagon Road, among pioneers who shared a common past and had their fill of Kings and tyrants, land speculation, religious discrimination, and overcrowding. The vast majority was Presbyterian Scotch Irish migrating from Pennsylvania at the end of the seven year French and Indian War, through a five-hundred mile corridor along the Appalachian mountains. Their journey took them across swollen rivers, muddy banks, ridges, ruts, and roots, south past Maryland and Virginia, to the cool parasol pines of the Piedmont backcountry of North Carolina, distal from the sun-scorched Atlantic littoral. They traveled in more than 1000 Conestoga wagons, armed with Pennsylvania rifles, and lured by hopes of cheap land available on the North Carolina frontier and the expectation that they would be free to practice their religion. Rev. David Caldwell decked his fortune with virtuous deeds at Buffalo and Alamance Presbyterian churches three years before he was officially installed as their minister.

The population in backcountry North Carolina grew from a few hundred in the 1740's to 39,000 European Americans and 3,000 African Americans by 1767. (Kars Marjorleine, Breaking Loose Together, The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2002, p. 16.) In 1750, the assembly created Anson County, which spanned the entire western Piedmont. In 1753, the assembly split Anson and renamed the northern part Rowan County. In 1762, they formed Mecklenberg County from the western part of Anson County. In 1752, Orange County was erected, located between Rowan to the west and Granville to the east. In 1771, the counties of Wake, Guilford and Chatham were created from parts of Orange and Rowan Counties, in an effort to gerrymand and concentrate the voting power of the backcountry farmers in one county while the others would remain in control of loyalists. The town of Hillsborough, located in the central Piedmont, was founded in 1754, incorporated in 1759, and given its current name in 1766. It served as the seat of the Orange County lower court and hosted meetings of the superior court of the Hillsborough District. It was located on a wagon road from Salisbury to the market town of Cross Creek (now Fayettville). A 1768 map shows the location of the courthouse, the jail, the Anglican church, numerous taverns, stores, and craft shops, and the layout of 140 lots, of which perhaps 45 were settled. (Kars Marjorleine, supra, p. 17.) A single wagon road spanned the distance between Hillsborough (Orange County), Alamance (Guilford County), and Salem (Rowan County).

Since at least 1725, hardly any Native Americans had resided in this Alamance region. Only the wind whistled in vacant villages and shook the buds of wildflowers in meadows where corn, beans, and squash had once grown. By 1701, smallpox and other communicable diseases against which they had no immunity had reduced their numbers to one-sixth. The largest tribe that had settled in Alamance had been the Sissipahaw, a branch of the Sioux family which crossed the Mississippi River centuries before. The tribe gave its name to the Haw or Saxapahaw River. Most of their villages had been built alongside streams and rivers. In 1712, the Tuscarora killed 16 of them because they refused to join and fight the English. The surviving Sissipahaw retreated deeper into the forest, leaving no archeological traces except their former dwellings, burial mounds, and scattered arrowheads. The tribe abandoned a region where there were so many buffalo that three of four men with their dogs could kill from 10 to 20 in a day. Deer were so plentiful that a rifleman with a little powder could easily kill 4 or 5 in a day. A common hunter could kill in the autumnal seasons as many bears as would make from 2000 to 3000 weight of bear bacon. The waters abounded with beavers, otters, and muskrats. (John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, edited by Hugh Talmadge Tefler, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1967; Robert W. Ramsey, Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier, 1747-1762, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964, at p. 305.)

As they had sought so often in the past, Presbyterians were looking for the Promised Land, if not Edenic Paradise. Believers would quote Isaiah 60:9 in regards to this, which says, “Surely the islands look to me; in the lead are the ships of Tarshish, bringing your sons from afar, with their silver and to the honor of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has endowed you with splendor.” Presbyterianism thrived on the road farthest from Anglican Bishops. No Anglican minister had visited the Piedmont backcountry until 1766. Neighbors included Quakers, Moravians, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Reformed Germans, all of whom sought to stay clear of Anglican interference.

Debts to the tax collector, tavern, and store muddied the well from which the Piedmont settlers could not satiate their thirst for independence. Sheriffs embezzled the taxes and picked the juries who shielded the embezzlers from conviction. They seized two, three, four times more of a debtor's property than what was owed and sold it for to friends for less than it was worth, sharing in the profits from resale. Neither shame nor guilt interceded when they took a farmer's plow for unpaid taxes and on at least one occasion, ripped a homespun dress from a farmer's wife and sold it at auction. Land agents absconded with entry fees, lawyers benefitted from litigiousness, justices took bribes, only the wealthy had currency with which to buy property at public auctions, and store owners and merchants profited twice, buying the crops at a low price and selling merchandise at a credit price that was several fold the cash price.

One evidence of the value of David Caldwell was the character of his adversary. The most powerful man in the backcountry was a condescending Col. Edmund Fanning (1737-1818), a Harvard/Yale lawyer, Hillsboro commissioner, and Haw River colonial assemblyman, impatient with any disagreement, leagued with scoundrels, fettering braver men dreading they should be free, who advanced his own interests while forsaking those of the backcountry settlers. (Kars Marjorleine, Breaking Loose Together, The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2002, pp. 55-75.) Fanning had moved from New York to North Carolina in 1763, where he had held various public offices, served as a judge, speculated in land, and has been described as the forerunner of the carpetbagger. Fanning treated the common people with contempt, and “they willingly returned the sentiment.” (William S. Powell, North Carolina Through Four Centuries, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1989, p. 151.) For his refusal as assemblyman to inform the backcountry settlers how the tax money was spent, they distrusted him. For his imperious efforts as the top ranked official of Orange County to reassert his authority, the backcountry settlers despised him. For his vindictiveness towards who insulted him, the settlers hated him. In simplest terms, they perceived Fanning as the evil violator of law, and themselves as the righteous defenders of the law.

Fanning regarded any Presbyterian claiming God on his side as diabolical. Fanning, who believed that whenever two or three Scotch Irish Presbyterian farmers were gathered together the devil of sedition was among them, was content with a very limited supply of Anglican sermons for the people. He disliked the long, loud, and distressing preaching ministry and aggressive religion of the Presbyterians. The power of the press was largely concentrated in the Presbyterian pulpit. He might have recalled the words of King Charles in 1646: “People are governed by pulpits more than the sword in times of peace.” Certainly he recognized that brimstone sermons were not the main theme of the amiable and popular Rev. David Caldwell. Rev. Caldwell was gaining the possession of the public ear not merely in the religious but in the constitutional struggle as well. Rev. Caldwell was neither histrionic nor neurotic, but a self-confident, charismatic, sophisticated spiritual and political leader. Rev. Caldwell had the attractiveness of a modern journalist, publicist, lecturer, and motivator.

No one then could have said with confidence that two centuries later, these two Presbyterian congregations would still be there, amid universities and colleges, high rises, an urban lifestyle, and a plethora of places of worship of almost all creeds and denominations. Buffalo Presbyterian Church is located at 803 16th Street, Greensboro, North Carolina 27405. 336-375-3380. Alamance Presbyterian Church is located at 4000 Presbyterian Road, Greensboro, North Carolina 27406. 336-698-0122. Even more surprising is that in 1968 Duke Power Company published a full page spread in North Carolina newspapers in recognition of the contributions of David Caldwell to North Carolina and American history. There had to have been something special about David Caldwell for him to be commemorated so long after his passing.

Rev. McAden's installation sermon is preserved in the special collection containing Rev. Eli W. Caruthers’ papers at Duke University. It reflects a view of the minister's responsibilities that was characteristic of what was then known as the New Side creed. Rev. McAden told David Caldwell to labor, not loiter, with the people diligently and painfully to instruct, comfort, and edify them, and to guide but not dominate them, as a shepherd his flock, all to the spiritual good and advantage of his flock. He must give warning to the dangers to which they were liable and inform them of their duties. Citing the New Testament, Rev. McAden advised the Rev. Caldwell of what conduct of his congregation would reveal their esteem and love for him according to his merit, talents, learning, and spiritual guidance. "When a thorough change is wrought in the hearts and lives of sinners--O how do their ministers rejoice….They come earthly and carnal, but if it is blessed to them, they go away healed of all their soul maladies." He advised the congregation that David Caldwell came to them as Noah's Ark with a peaceful olive branch. David Caldwell solemnly promised to administer the sacraments of the New Testament, baptism and Lord's Supper, join with the Ruling Elders in exercising the discipline and government established in the Church, and make the sacred scriptures his only infallible and supreme rule, as explained in the Westminster Confession of Faith, catechisms, sum of saving knowledge, directory for worship and discipline which he adopted at his ordination, and conduct himself as a Christian and as minister of the gospel, in his personal, domestic and public capacity, and be an example to believers in word, conversation, charity, spirit, faith, unity, that they may follow him.

The dangers to which Rev. McAden referred included that of mob violence. By March 1768, the anger of backcountry farmers needed only a spark to burst into destructive flame. Unlike the coastal merchants and landed gentry who acted as Sons of Liberty in protest of the British Stamp Act of 1765, the backcountry farmers had as their object of collective protest not merely the oppressive and corrupt British government, but the exploitative coastal merchants and gentry as well. They complained that the coastal elite extended credit on oppressive terms and siphoned currency from the backcountry needed to pay taxes, court fees, and buy property at public auction. Farmers were being evicted by manipulation of the court system. Justices, juries, land agents and surveyors were on the make. Earlier attempts by the Sandy Creek Association at Hillsborough in 1766 to seek redress of grievances had been met with governmental rebuke and reprisals. The backcountry settlers shared with the Sons of Liberty the belief in a social contract, the essential elements of which were the following: "The People protected their liberties by transferring part of their power and sovereignty to the government and abiding by the government's just laws. When the government abused this trust and evaded the laws or passed oppressive ones, people were obliged to obtain relief by legal and peaceful means, such as petitions and elections. But when such attempts were ignored, did not produce results, or were subverted by corrupt authorities, forceful popular resistance was deemed a civil duty crucial to the preservation for the public good." (Kars Marjorleine, supra, p. 133.)

As a member of the Synod of New York Rev. Caldwell's sympathies favored the New Siders, but he served both New Side and Old Side congregations respectively at Buffalo and Alamance. The term "New Sider" derives from a division of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland and Ulster Ireland that had spread to the colonies. In the American colonies, the Presbyterian Church was divided into the Synod of New York, constituting the New Side, and the Synod of Philadelphia, representing the Old Side. The New Side was led by a ministry most of whom were trained in the colonies, while the Old Side was led by a ministry comprised largely of ministers trained in Scotland. The New Side was evangelistic, while the Old Side opposed revivals. The New Side welcomed itinerant Methodist preacher, Whitefield; the Old Side rejected him. The New Side opened its membership to anyone who converted, including Negroes. The Old Side sought a church that was exclusively Scotch Irish. The New Side emphasized that the minister must earn the esteem, admiration and affection of his local congregation, while the Old Siders emphasized the congregation's duty to obey the Church Elders and minister. The New Side emphasized those portions of the New Testament that declare any one could be saved through a process of conversion and grace, while the Old Siders stuck with the more rigid Calvinist doctrine that the vast majority was destined to go to hell. The Old Side derisively called the New Siders "enthusiasts," meaning that they were resting belief upon emotion rather than scripture. The seminaries at Harvard and Yale favored the Old Side. Princeton (known in the colonial era as the College of New Jersey) was for the New Side.

The New Side derived from elements of Congregationalism brought by New Englanders, and reinforced by interest in the Great Awakening of 1740-42 among Presbyterians who had been born and raised in the colonies. In 1741 the Synod of Philadelphia excluded the New Brunswick Presbytery for "irregularities." Four years later the schism came. The divisive issues were the revival and its extravagancies, the evangelistic training which the Reverend William Tennent taught at his Log College on Neshaminy Creek, Pennsylvania, and the question of the right to itinerate. Harvard and Yale would not admit any pupils to their seminaries except Old Siders. The New Siders established the College of New Jersey to train their evangelists. (G. H. Ingram, "Erection of the Presbytery of New Brunswick," Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, VI, 225-33I.) 1758, these two groups of Old Siders and New Siders reunited, by achieving a compromise on matters of governance, if not theology. The Compromise derived from a Plan of Union of 1729, which included this Clause:

"When any Matter is determined by a Majority Vote, every Member Shall either actively concur with, or passively Submit to Such Determination; or, if his Conscience permit him to do neither, he Shall, after Sufficient Liberty modestly to reason and remonstrate, peaceably withdraw from our Communion, without attempt to make any Schism: Provided always, that this Shall be understood to extend only to Such Determinations, as the Body Shall judge indispensable in Doctrine or Presbyterian Government."

Congregationalism was chiefly a religion of the northern United States, whose members were among the elite. Congregationalism went where Yankees went. Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards, preached revivals in Massachusetts in the 1730's and 1740's. Its great legacy was church organization, theology and concepts of world mission. The congregationalists differed from Anglicans in emphasizing local community control of churches without Bishops. Eventually Unitarians and Trinitarians evolved from Congregationalism. The congregationalist churches were the first among North American Protestant churches to send missionaries worldwide. (Martin Marty, "North America," Chapter 11, The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, John McManners, ed., Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 395-6.)

The term Great Awakening is commonly used to describe the religious zeal that began with Englishman George Whitefield's tour of the American colonies in 1740-42. Revivals were common to Christianity, dating back to at least the Crusades. As the Scotch Irish immigrated from the middle colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey into North Carolina, their ministers brought the Great Awakening of revivalism with them. Rev. McAden and his protégée David Caldwell were among the first clergy carrying the message of the Great Awakening into the North Carolina backcountry. The Great Awakening encouraged participation of common people in church affairs and theological debates, thereby gaining a stronger sense of self and collective power. (Marjorleine Kars, supra, p. 83.) This interaction between Rev. Caldwell and his congregations helped him gain a loyal constituency.

Anglican minister Charles Woodmason complained that the religious radicalism of the New Insiders poisoned "the Minds of the People --Instilling Democratical and Common Wealth Principles into their Minds --Embittering them against the very Name of Bishops, and all Episcopal Government and laying deep their fatal republican Notions and Principles." (Richard J. Hooker, ed., The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1953, pp. 240-241.) "Afrik never more abounded with New Monsters, than Pennsylvania does with New Sects, which are continually sending out their Emissaries," observed Woodmason in 1765. These "new Lights or the Gifted Brethren," who "pretend to Inspiration," he wrote, "now infest the whole [North Carolina] Back Country." (Marjorlein Kars, supra, pp. 83-84.)

Rev. Hugh McAden, a moderate New Sider, was licensed in 1755 by New Castle Presbytery, and was immediately sent out as a missionary to the Carolinas. His journal is set forth in William Henry Foote (1794-1869), Sketches of North Carolina, Historical and Biographical, Illustrative of the Principles of a Portion of Her Early Settlers, Principles of a Portion of Her Early Settlers, New York: Robert Carter, 1846. In 1759 Rev. McAden became pastor at Hanover Presbytery, which then included the greater part of Virginia. Among the members who formed Hanover Presbytery was Alexander Craighead, an extreme New Sider. (See, Rev. E. H. Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Publication [1864] Microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms [n.d.] (American Culture Series, Reel 372.4.) Alexander Craighead, the first minister in the vicinity of Sugar Creek, North Carolina, was a member of New Brunswick Presbytery when it withdrew from the Synod of Philadelphia. (W. H. Foote, supra, pp. 184-186.) McAden and Craighead were admirers of the evangelist George Whitefield.

Historian Robert M. Calhoon observed that Rev. McAden's installation sermon of David Caldwell called for the congregations at Buffalo and Alamance "to submerge their New and Old Side affiliations in reciprocal relationships with each other and their new minister based on diligence, respect, and spiritual discipline." (Robert M. Calhoon, "Scotch Irish Presbyterians and Political Moderation," Journal of Scotch Irish Studies (2002).)

Destiny

At the giving of the installation sermon, no omens, heralds, or "eddies of a mighty stream rolling to its appointed end" (William Cullens Bryant) alerted Rev. McAden that David Caldwell was likely, if not certain, to play a significant role as educator, religious leader, and politician, not only for the local congregation, but as well for the Piedmont backcountry farmers throughout North Carolina, be they Presbyterian, Quaker, Moravian, Baptist, Methodist, or whatever. But Rev. McAden could have made a well educated guess that David Caldwell's future was bright.

Charisma

First, Rev. McAden could not have overlooked the charisma possessed by Rev. Caldwell, a trait commonly associated with strong leaders. In Rev. Caruthers’ biography of David Caldwell, he wrote:

"There was something about him which was unique, and which language cannot define." His facial expression and manner were such that with very few words he was able to make his listener understand how he felt on whatever question was placed before him. His response was given with such calmness and good humor that no feelings of disapproval were excited, even if his point of view was different on the subject under discussion." (Eli W. Caruthers, 1793-1865, A Sketch of The Life and Character of the David Caldwell, D.D., Near Sixty years Pastor of the Churches of Buffalo and Alamance, Swaim and Sherwood, Greensborough, North Carolina, 1842, pp. 30-31.)

Educator

Secondly, Rev. Caldwell had already endeavored to establish what he desired to appear-- a reputation as an effective and inspirational educator. To supplement his salary, David Caldwell purchased a 550 acre farm near the Buffalo Creek Church, and in 1767 commenced a classical school in his own two story log house, attracting 50 to 60 young men per year, teaching them much more than reading, reckoning, and religion, which he continued, with interruption only during the Revolutionary War, till he was too infirm to continue teaching. (Eli W. Caruthers, The Life and Character of David Caldwell, supra, pp. 30-31; Rev. E. H. Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Publication [1864] Microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms [n.d.] (American Culture Series, Reel 372.4), p. 227; W. H. Foote, supra, p. 235.)

Rev. Caruthers wrote: "His usefulness as a teacher was scarcely inferior to his usefulness in the pulpit." His school became known as the Eton of the South.

Rev. Caruthers reports that five future Governors, many more Senators and Congressmen, as well as numerous physicians and over fifty Presbyterian ministers, including some of the most eminent men in the South, graduated from his Log College. Rev. Caruthers commented:

"The most important service which David Caldwell rendered, as a teacher, was to the church, or to the cause of religion; for nearly all the young men who came into the ministry of the Presbyterian church, for many years, not only in North Carolina, but in the States south and west of it, were trained in his school." (E.W. Caruthers, The Life and Character of David Caldwell, D.D., supra, p. 37.)

Rev. Caruthers observed that after the Revolutionary War, Rev. Caldwell charged $10 to $12 per annum tuition, but dispensed with it for those unable to pay. (E.W. Caruthers, The Life and Character of David Caldwell, D.D., supra, p. 271.)

The David Caldwell Log College Site in Greensboro has been a National Registered Historic Site since 1982. The Log College served as a boarding-room academy, a college, a theological seminary, and one of the few schools on the frontier anywhere. It served as a nursery of both piety and science, a place at once to train ministers and statesmen, a promoter of character, social order, Presbyterian orthodoxy, and revivalism and political well being. His better students completed in what then amounted to college-level courses, although his academy never granted degrees. The Log College has been metaphorically described as "a fortress between the frontier and the spiritual and cultural pattern it had brought to the frontier" as well as "a bridge that connected succeeding generations of Presbyterian pastors to the long history of Presbyterian revivalism," the roots of which can be traced back to outdoor, sacramental, revivalist gatherings in Ulster Ireland and southwest Scotland in the late sixteenth century. (Helen Turnbull Waite Coleman, Banners in the Wilderness, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1956; Leigh Eric Schmist, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period, Princeton University Press, 1989. See also Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity, New York Oxford University Press, 1988, and Paul Conkin, Cane Ridge, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.)

In Mark F. Miller's investigation of Rev. David Caldwell's educational contributions, Miller was able to find documentation identifying by name only 65 of the pupils at the Log College, and was not able to corroborate Rev. Caruthers’ statement that Rev. David Caldwell had taught five future governors. (Mark F. Miller, David Caldwell : The Forming of a Southern Educator. Ph.D. Thesis. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1979.)

I am doubtful that Rev. Caldwell taught only a handful of pupils each year and 65 in his lifetime. The far greater likelihood is that he had to turn applicants away, and the classroom was full, perhaps with ½ day sessions to serve the morning and afternoon pupils. A teacher typically handles classes today ranging between 20 and 30 pupils per class, so Caldwell could have easily taught 40 to 60 pupils per day. This number would also explain the need for 8 to 9 slaves, to wash the clothes, prepare and serve the food, and do housecleaning. Caldwell's reputation as an effective educator rules out the likelihood that the college was shunned and tottered on closure. The burning of his large library in the Revolutionary War implies that the College was well established at that time.

A discussion of archeological discoveries is set forth in John C. Baroody’s Archeological Investigations at the Site of David Caldwell’s Log College, located in the Caldwell Jones Collection, Greensboro Public Library. A sketch of the stone foundation of the Log College is provided in the Caldwell Family Newsletter, Fall, 1999, p. 335. The classroom of the Caldwell Log College measured 20 x 20 feet, the same as that of Tennent's Log College, and perhaps of the same dimensions as that of the classrooms at the College of New Jersey (Princeton).

Background

Third, Rev. McAden probably recognized that Rev. Caldwell came from a family background that would help make him acceptable to backcountry farmers.

David Caldwell's parents had emigrated from Scotland, went directly to the Colonial Pennsylvania frontier, cleared the land, prospered, obtained clear title despite ever increasing land prices from the influx of new settlers and land speculation, survived the perils of the frontier, raised four sturdy sons, and with the help of David's brothers, provided for his education. At his death, David's father owned one of the larger farms in Drumore Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and was able to provide a significant inheritance for David -- enough money with which to buy a large tract of land in North Carolina backcountry. All of David's brothers became Presbyterian church elders of the congregations to which they belonged. This is precisely the outcome these backcountry Scotch Irish sought. Perspiration, perseverance, piety, and passion -- these were qualities the typical backcountry Piedmont farmer admired.

David Caldwell's father Andrew (and likely David's mother Martha as well, in a grave that has lost its grave marker) is buried at Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church Cemetery, 1068 Chestnut Level Road, Drumore Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Drumore Township is located about 7 miles southwest of Quarryville. The cemetery is located at Chestnut Level and River Roads 1 mile west of Pennsylvania Highway 222 and south of Highway 372 in the southern part of Lancaster County, near Hensel, about 8 miles north of the PA/MD state line.

The French and Indian War, 1754-1763, began a few years before Andrew’s death in 1757. The War increased the colonists’ dependence upon Britain, delayed the colonists to some degree in acting upon grievances against Britain, and helped unify the colonies. The words of Gov. Dinwiddie echoed through the colonial newspapers in 1754:

“Think you see the Infant torn from the unavailing Struggles of the distracted Mother, the Daughters ravished before the Eyes of their wretched Parents; and then, with Cruelty and Insult, butchered and scalped. Suppose the horrid Scene compleated, and the whole Family, Man, Wife, and Children (as they were) murdered and scalped...and then torn in Pieces, and in Part devoured by wild Beasts, for whom they were left a Prey by their more brutal Enemies.”

In the May 9, 1754 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Benjamin Franklin printed a woodcut of a disjointed snake whose parts represented the separate colonies, and the words, “Join” or “Die.” The movement toward colonial unity began while Andrew and Martha were still alive.

In November 1755, 400 to 500 armed men gathered in Lancaster County, demanding a scalp bounty from the Quaker government, to reward them for killing any Indian, friend or enemy. They accused the government of “selling out to a race more alien than the French.” The Quakers responded by printing pamphlets caricaturing the Scotch Irish as rawboned, ill-educated, uncultured hicks.

Andrew and Martha had passed away before the Paxton riots of the winter of 1763 to 1764. Scotch Irish Presbyterian backcountry settlers, calling themselves latter-day Joshuas bent on converting Indians, even if by baptism of fire, massacred small groups of submissive and civilized Conestoga Indians in and around Lancaster before marching on the capital at Philadelphia to slaughter Moravian-associated Indians, including men, women, and children who had been provided shelter by the Quakers at a barracks on the Delaware. The panicked Governor John Penn turned to Benjamin Franklin for help. Franklin mustered a militia of 1000 men and succeeded in turning back the invasion at Philadelphia. (Bernard Foy, Franklin, The Apostle of Modern Times, Little, Brown and Co., 1929, pp. 305-6.) Benjamin Franklin authored A Narrative of the late Massacres in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indians, Friends of this Province, by Persons Unknown, Philadelphia, 1764, in which he denounced the Scotch Irish clergy and sympathizers who approved of this attack and had welcomed the Paxton Boys home as heroes.

These riots were the first instance of “white rage” and mass political awareness in Pennsylvania. Hostility towards the Indians brought about increasing anger by the Scotch Irish towards the Quakers who sought to maintain harmony with the Indians and a profitable fur trade. For every Indian killed, fifty Scotch Irish had been killed. Newspapers and anti-Quaker pamphlets were filled with stories of Indian mutilation, murder of women and children, kidnaps, and sexual torture. Surprisingly, among those whites who remained captive of the Indians for a long time, many acclimated themselves and resisted repatriation to the white settlements.

Some historians have expressed the opinion that the counties on the Indian frontier of Pennsylvania “forged a self-conscious religious and national community,” by drawing people from diverse origins, religions, ethnic groups, and cultures, all white, focusing their anger on the Indians and their allies, and against the King who failed to protect them and was even accused of setting the Indians upon them. In writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson charged that King George III “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence...”

Rupp’s A History of Lancaster County: to which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Early History of Pennsylvania, Spartanburg, S.C., Reprint Co., 1984, composed by Israel Daniel Rupp (1844), reprinted by the Lancaster County Historical Society in its quarterly, provides a fairly good account of the relationship between the Lancaster County settlers and the native Americans, the early efforts to establish a road between Philadelphia and Lancaster Co, the establishment of gun manufacturing and Conestoga wagon manufacturing in Lancaster Co, the rivalry between the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Scots-Irish for political power, and the influx of a great variety of religious orders.

Rev. James Geddes Craighead wrote:

“[W]herever [the first Scot and Scots-Irish immigrants] formed a settlement, they promptly organized a congregation for Christian worship. The Westminster Confession of Faith and its Directory of Worship was endeared to them. They were resolved to maintain the doctrines and polity of the Presbyterian Church for themselves and their children. They were zealous in preserving their ecclesiastic organization as an offspring of religious liberty. Youths in this early period were taught at home, and under parental instructions, and trained to obedience and subordination, as the unbending law of the family. The schools established by the Presbyterian ministers, confirmed and extended the family education.

“The mass of these emigrants were men of intelligence, resolution, energy, religious, and moral character, having means that enabled them to supply themselves with suitable selections of land, on which they made permanent homes for their families.”

“They were a God-fearing, liberty-loving, tyrant-hating, Sabbath-keeping, covenant-adhering race; trained by trials, made resolute by oppression, governed by conscience, and destined to achieve a mission and place in history of the Church and the race.” (Rev. James Geddes Craighead, The Craighead Family: A Genealogical Memoir, supra, p. 52.)

In actuality, many Scots-Irish immigrated without ministers, and less than 1/15 in the middle colonies, including Pennsylvania, as of 1740 were church members. (Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait, N.Y. Knopf, 1971, p. 181.)

In Rev. Caruthers’ Life and Character of David Caldwell, D.D., he mentions the scarcity of ministers in North Carolina before 1760. While Rev. James Geddes Craighead’s description may be an exaggeration as to the Scots and Scotch Irish generally, it does appear to be an accurate portrayal of Andrew and Martha Caldwell and the Buffalo and Alamance Congregations which invited their son David Caldwell to be its minister.

Craighead’s portrayal of the pioneer Scotch Irish stands in contrast to Francis Place’s portrayal of the typical tavern-haunting, club-going, gambling London tradesman of the eighteenth century, many of whom became destitute through dissipation and gambling.

During the Revolutionary War, Lancaster County became the major supplier of guns, hand fabricated goods, and grains to feed the continental armies.

David's brothers, Alexander, Andrew, and John, were all disaffected with the abuses of the British government. During the Revolutionary War the farm inherited by John and Andrew may been called to supply food for the troops. On September 27, 1777, the Continental Congress, fleeing from the British invaders of Philadelphia, arrived in Lancaster and held a regular session there, making Lancaster the temporary capital. The Pennsylvania government also took up residence in Lancaster and remained there for the duration of the British occupation of Philadelphia.

Alexander Caldwell was named after the family pastor, Alexander Craighead. He moved to Guilford Co., North Carolina, and bought land next to the farm of his brother, David. His wife was Margaret. Alexander fought for the North Carolina militia under Gen. Nathanael Greene in the Carolinas. Over eighty percent of military actions during the War were fought in the South. Alexander Caldwell is listed in the Patriot Index as No. 0672271. He attended Buffalo Presbyterian Church. The loss of church records by fire and missing grave markers prevents us from knowing whether he is buried at the Buffalo Presbyterian Church cemetery. He was appointed as the Justice of Peace in 1776 of Guilford Co., North Carolina. He died in August 1784 in Guilford Co., due to a fever that he had acquired during the Guilford County Courthouse Battle. After the settlement of his estate, his surviving wife and children, along with many Scotch Irish, moved to Greene County in the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains, which later became a part of the State of Tennessee in June of 1796. Alexander’s children included Mary, Samuel, Thomas, Martha, Margaret and Rachel. These children are the first of my ancestors to move to Tennessee. Presbyterianism became the first religion among white settlers established in that State. Today about one in five Tennesseans can trace their ancestry to the early Scotch Irish settlers.

Andrew served as a "court martial man" in the Lancaster Co. Militia, 2nd Battalion, 7th Company in the Revolutionary War. He never married. Andrew died at age 74 on March 11, 1808 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

John served as First Captain of the Lancaster County Militia 6th Battalion during the Revolutionary War. John was born about 1736 in Lancaster Co, Pa. He died at age 76 on June 12, 1812 in Lancaster Co, Pennsylvania. He never married. He served as a Ruling Elder of the Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church.

The fact that David Caldwell was neither a lawyer nor merchant likely helped his standing. The backcountry farmers resented the high fees charged by lawyers and the profits made by merchants. Each of these classes of gentry tended to favor a judicial system that favored their interests over those of the farmers.

David Caldwell's farm in Greensboro was considered among the best managed in the region. Scotch Irish were not generally known for preserving the fertility of their soil. When soil exhaustion depleted the yield of the soil, many simply moved to new land. Growing up amid the Pennsylvania Dutch in Lancaster County who excelled at improving the productivity of farmland and bringing crops and produce to market at Lancaster and Philadelphia, David Caldwell and his fellow immigrants from Pennsylvania likely had learned some valuable lessons. The Reverend William Henry Foote, the first historian of North Carolina Presbyterianism, writing in 1846, refers with pride to the beautiful farms and plantations which Presbyterians of the ante-bellum era possessed.

Like many sons of Scottish immigrants, David Caldwell chose to leave the family farm and earn his living first in a craft, and later in a profession. His youth did not determine what he would be as an adult, but the joys of that youth remained with him. Although he became a professional and one of the most prominent persons in the colonies, he preferred the rural lifestyle to which he had become accustomed as a child. He taught for much of his life in a log structure, chopping wood, clearing the land, riding horseback, breathing pollution free air, hunting wild turkey, treating others as his equal, and avoiding the life of gentry idleness and Walden Pond seclusion. He may have enjoyed the writings of Thomas Jefferson, who expressed the agrarian view that rural citizenry were morally virtuous and superior to city dwellers. This view is still held today throughout the South. However, today people seeking privacy, safety and a slower paced life display a preference for rural living. These values do not seem to be associated with the life of David Caldwell.

Rev. Caruthers reports that David Caldwell had twelve or thirteen children, the most well known of whom was his first born, the Rev. Samuel Craighead Caldwell, born 1767, died August 25, 1824. Several children died in infancy. David’s other surviving children were Rev. Alexander Caldwell, born 1769, died October 2, 1841; Andrew Caldwell, born 1771, educated at Princeton, a minister, died June 12, 1845; Martha "Patsy" Caldwell, born 1775, died January 27, 1826; the twins Thomas Caldwell and David Caldwell, M.D., born October 7, 1777; John Washington Caldwell, born 1780, died December 8, 1844; James Edmund Caldwell, born 1772, died July, 1836; and Robert Craighead Caldwell, born 1786. His only daughter, Martha "Patsy" Caldwell, born 1775, lost her reason in 1792 and remained in a state of derangement until her death. Thomas Caldwell married Elizabeth Doak on March 24, 1813 in Guilford Co. and died July 3, 1857. David Caldwell, M.D., married Susan Clark on July 15, 1811 in Guilford Co. John Washington Caldwell married twice, first to Martha Davis 1800. After her death, he married Margaret Cabe on October 1, 1822 in Guilford Co. Robert Craighead Caldwell married in succession Maria B. Latta 1823, Marjorie Woodburn 1850, and Mary Clancy, 1855. James Edmund Caldwell sustained brain trauma at age 6 or 7 became deranged about the age 21, never married, and remained confined until his death, in 1836. Andrew Caldwell never married. None of Rev. Caldwell's children lived to witness the Civil War, and the end of the Ante-Bellum Plantations. They are all buried at Buffalo Presbyterian Church cemetery.

Among David Caldwell's children and grandchildren, none became lawyers nor sued anyone.

Most of the original congregation at Buffalo Presbyterian Church was comprised of Scotch Irish families from Nottingham Presbyterian Church of Rising Sun (then known as Summer Hill), Pennsylvania (now Maryland), many of whom who had known David Caldwell in youth and had asked for him to be installed as their minister. During the period of the great migration to the Carolinas, a group of Scotch-Irish Pennsylvania Presbyterians formed an organization known as the "Nottingham. Company" which sent agents and purchased a tract of land in what is now Guilford County, on the banks of Buffalo and. Reedy Fork Creeks. The Buffalo Church was organized about 1758.

The Nottingham congregation in 1740 invited Presbyterian New Sider minister Gilbert Tennent to give a sermon. He spoke on the dangers of an unconverted ministry. Tennent castigated Old Siders as enemies of Christ, and as obstacles to conversion. His call for conscientious objectors to separate themselves from the unconverted ministers offended New Sider clergy, as well as the intended target, the Old Sider clergy, in Philadelphia and Boston, both of whom perceived that no pastor's authority would be secure and congregations would break up simply to get a minister to their liking. There were in fact numerous separations and breakups of congregations following this sermon. (Richard L. Bushman, ed., "Trouble in the Churches," The Great Awakening: Documents n the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1970, pp. 85-93.)

Nottingham Presbyterian minister Samuel Finley (1715-1766) had been one of supporters of Gilbert Tennent and George Whitefield's teachings, and likened those ministers who opposed Whitefield as false prophets who persecuted the true ones, the Scribes and Pharisees who persecuted Christ and his Apostles, and vain ministers whose ecclesiastic pride hindered them from embracing the Reformation. (Samuel Finley, "A Letter to a Friend, 1741," in The Great Awakening: Documents of the Revival of Religion, 1740-1745, Richard L Bushman, supra, p. 111.)

Many of the Alamance congregation were Scotch Irish who had migrated from Lancaster and Chester Counties, Colonial Pennsylvania.

Calvin Henderson Wiley, 1819-1887, author of Alamance; Or, The Great And Final Experiment, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York, 1847, pp. 11-12, asserts that Rev. David Caldwell told a visitor some three-quarters of a century previously ©. 1777):

"Alamance," said he, "was one of the first places settled by the whites in middle Carolina. The lands are fertile, the climate pleasant, and the country healthy, and thus this section of the state early attracted the attention of emigrants. Those who came to settle here were, generally, men of character and substance, and were seeking, not so much to advance their worldly fortunes as to promote their happiness, which was intimately connected with the enjoyment of civil and religious freedom. They were mostly 'Scotch-Irish,' a race of men who, the world over, have been proved to be true to their country, to their friends, and their principles, which are always of a liberal cast. They are Presbyterians in religion, republicans in their political notions, and are ever ready to fight or go to the stake for their opinions. Such were the original inhabitants of Alamance, who, far removed from cities and their fashionable follies and vices, were distinguished in their manners by a primeval simplicity, while their characters displayed the prisca et incorrupta fides, the incorruptible integrity, candour, faith, and singleness of heart attributed by the poets to a fabled pastoral age. There was originally in the neighbourhood (and it is a large one) but one merchant, and not a single trader at large, by which last term I mean that sort of professional character that prowls about society, flourishing on the vices which he propagates, and the necessities he creates. Nearly every family in the whole community was, and even now is, in independent circumstances, and some are even rich. Still there are no grades and coteries in society; no parties in politics; and no hostile religious sects warring rancorously on each other, and claiming as their object the diffusion of a spirit of Christian philanthropy. My parishioners are generally severe in their judgment on themselves, charitable to the failings and shortcomings of others, and, though frugal in their expenditures, ever ready to entertain the stranger and relieve the necessitous. It is, sir, a remarkable and honourable fact, that every one in my congregation, over ten years old, can read and write; some are even well read in history and the belles-lettres, and in every house you are sure to meet with well thumbed copies of 'Fox's Book of Martyrs,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' 'The Balm of Gilead,' 'The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,' and other kindred books. The learning of my people is thus generally of a theological character, and the midwife, and several other good old ladies in my cure, could hold their own against the famous Aquinas, and put to flight all the doctors of the Sorbonne. Thus religious subjects, with tales of religious persecutions, of Indian massacres, and of civil usurpations, exactions and oppressions, while away the winter evenings at every fireside, and tinge with a devotional hue the sentiments and feelings of the Alamancers. Our people, as I have before intimated, would make excellent republicans, for there is among them a deep-rooted aversion, I may say detestation, of every species of tyranny, and an attachment to liberty--real, true, genuine, and well regulated liberty--stronger than the love of life or the fear of death. They have the virtues becoming citizens of a democracy--that first-born hope of philanthropy. The old men are sedate, just, free-hearted, and single-hearted, well understanding their rights, thinking for themselves, and extremely jealous of those who cultivate popularity: the matrons are chaste, dutiful, and affectionate; the maidens pure, simple, artless, pious, tender, and beautiful; and the young men brave, ingenuous, and modest. Among all there is no one aspiring to take the lead. There is none of that restlessness, that reaching for family aggrandizement, that desire of change, which characterizes every community, even in perfect democracies. There is also another notable difference between this people and other wealthy settlements in this country--" (http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/wiley/wiley.html

(c) 2002 David Andrew Caldwell