This is likely to be a continuing ramble. Many surnames are easy to pick or an explanation can be given that is reasonably satisfactory and acceptable. I think that the commonly accepted meaning for Caldwell has to be taken "as read" until a better proof or reasoning can be found.

I will firstly quote at length from "A Dictionary of British Surnames" by PH Reaney, second edition 1961 as reprinted in 1983 [Routledge & Kegan Paul plc] ISBN 0 7100 8106 5

"Caldwell, Calwell, Cauldwell, Caudwell, Caudell, Caudle, Cawdell, Caddell, Cadel, Cadwell, Cardwell, Coldwell, Couldwell, Chadwell, Cholwell: Adam de Caldewella 1195 P (Db); Richard de Coldewell 1379 PTY; Richard Cauldwell 1381 PTY; JohnCawdewelle 1524 SRSf. 'Cold spring or stream', OE ceald, wielle, surviving as Caldwell (Wrwicks, NRYorks), Caldwall (Worcs), Cauldwell (Beds, Derby, Notts), Caudle Green (Glos), Caudle Ditch and Caudle Fen (Cambs), Cadewell 1417, Cadle 1591, Chadwell (Essex, Herts, Leics, Wilts), Chardwell (Essex) and Chardle Ditch (Cambs), Kadewelle 13th, Cadwel 14th. For Forms, cf. CALDECOT. v also CADWALL, CADWELL.

In Scotland Caldwell and Coldwell, formerly pronounced Carwall, are from Caldwell (Renfrewshire)."

This is the commonly accepted reasoning and we must accept it for now.

I wish to put up a number of alternatives but before I do this I make the observation that there are a great number of places in England (none apparently in Wales) from where the surname may have been derived and yet the "English" branch of Caldwell seems to be far less numerous than that from Scotland. Furthermore many "English" Caldwell's are in fact Scots families who had moved there. Almost all the Irish Caldwell families can trace their ancestry to Scotland. Contrast this with the place name that is said to be the source of the naming of the Scots family. It is the name of a property held by the Mure family. A very substantial property said to have been taken into the Mure family by marriage with an heiress in the 1300's. Nonetheless it is an estate and has been alienated from the Caldwell family for a very long time. Even the closest village is known as Lugton and not "Caldwell". It is possible that the family name was established through association with the estate but I might wonder why the Caldwell surname is much more common than Mure? (not Moore, Muir or other variants but possibly "More"). The Mure/More family were very wealthy and owned many large properties in their network. If the Caldwell name prospered because of its association with the Mure property of "Caldwell" we might then wonder why there are not also great numbers of persons with a surname reflecting the other Mure properties: Polkelly, Coudams, Glanderston, Rowallan?

Next the property of Caldwell is another property that was undoubtedly in the hands of the superior line of the Caldwell family until the late 1600's : "The Hall of Little Caldwell".

There is no doubt that there were a good number of Caldwell's in that region from an early date and that they had a family relationship to the Mure's.

Pronunciation: my father carefully told me how "country" people pronounced Caldwell as "Ker-wahl" with the first part iterated quickly and almost gutturally "Ker..." and the last syllable a drawn out "waaahl". I wondered why it would be pronounced this way, my father thought it was just the Scots "lazy speech" and my uncle Tom told me he thought it was "just a nickname". Both told me that members of the CALDWELL family "always" pronounced it "Caldwell" as it is written. On the site http://caldwellgenealogy.com a posting member stated that in the USA Caldwell had been pronounced Kuh-well or even Quail in some regions and I think that this corroborates to some extent the Scots version in a divergence over some centuries.

I can provide a semblance of explanation on back grounding Kerwahl (or Carwall as Reaney put it):

"Car" is a common name in Scotland for places that were positions of fortifications and equivalent to the Welsh and Welsh border "Caer" and Wall or Walls could be either an English reference to Walls or to Wallys which meant the original British "Welsh" inhabitants of Strathclyde from which the modern surname Wallace is derived.

To the North West of the property Caldwell and, very likely even once on the Caldwell property itself is an Iron Age Fort built appropriately on "Walls Hill". Nearby there are two farms called Castlewalls. On an old map I found a tower marked "Castle Wallace" just to the south of Walls Hill. Just to the East of Caldwell there are two further farms named "Carwell".

From the story of Howwood:
"A vast hill fort can be found on Walls Hill. It has been suggested that this was a Celtic 'oppidium' and possibly the capital of the Damnonii in Roman times."

The link of the pronounced name to the physical is quite strong but I cannot connect the pronunciation to the spelling.

I also note as a by-the-way that Murer in French means to wall in. I might wonder if some preoccupation with walls led to the divergence of the surnames about the time of the Norman family feudalisation of Scotland. The fact that a Thomas Caldwell "built" Kelburn Castle and the late Mrs Lesley Anne Gordon claimed that the Caldwell's were celebrated master masons might point to a long history of castle building (smile).

Caldwell's in Lochwinnoch area seem to have had their grants of land from the Fitzallan's (later Stewarts) and also seem to be quite prolific at an early date in the area south of the River Irvine known as Kings Kyle. Furthermore this mirrors the Wallace family areas.

I surmise that the Caldwell's could have been followers of the Fitzallan's from England when they first came to Scotland. The Scottish Royal family for a long time held lands in the midlands known as "The Honour of Huntingdon" and this strangely enough seems to be the area in England where there are a good number of English Caldwell's.

Located in the general area is Litchfield Cathedral where St Chad's Well is located. Veneration of wells is an old custom in the midlands and probably is a left over from the Germanic cult of Teutones. Sufficient that Chadwell and Caldwell are almost synonymous and this fact is acknowledged by Reaney. There is a Caldwell Hall in a village of Chadwell.

Furthermore the Scots Caldwell shield shows three piles and waves and the crest is a fountain "springing up water". Perhaps cold water and a spring, but hey! the Scots Caldwell comes from a place-name (we are told) - it is the English one that came from "cold water"! Significantly Litchfield Cathedral is relatively unique in having three equal sized spires, very much like the piles on the Scots Caldwell shield. The water may signify St Chad's well and the fountain the grace achieved by a pilgrimage to the holy well. I will come back to the alternative spellings and pronunciations for St Chad and his brother.

Scots who came from the Wallace family regions would have been very proud to have been called "Wallace" after the feats of their kinsman and patriot leader William Wallace but they might not have been able to write. Consequently it would have been quite legitimate for regulatory purposes when asked their name "What are ye Cau'd?" to have replied "I'm Cau'd Wallys". To which the scribes might have written "Cauldwalls".

Not finished: I have also noted similar names but not attached much to this fact but they need to be recorded: the district of Cowall across the Firth of Clyde; the Norman French Colville.

According to Reaney :

"Gauld: Jas Gald 1550 Black; John Gauld 1686 ib. Gael gallda 'pertaining to the lowlands'. v GALL, GALT"

"Gales: Mager' Galeys 1279 RH (C); Henry le Galeys, le walais 1299, 1305 LoCt. The central French form of Wallis, or OG Walo. v. WALES"

From Mrs Gordon's research:

"Petrus ver (Petricus) Caldwell carta Petri Caldwell de tenus de Colgreve ... 1412/carta from Sir Adam Fullarton of Crosbie in his favour of lands of Scottishaw (now called Gaylis) dated Irvine 1391" (after Otterburn)

Comment: "de tenus de Colgreve" is a puzzle it seems to point to an existing property connection of "Petri Caldwell". I have looked fro a connection to a place called Colgreve or Colgreave or Colgrave but have found no such place. The closest is Colgrave Sound in the Shetlands between Yell and Fetlar but this is most unlikely. I have tried the family name to see if it can be linked to a place and there are a few of the "Colgrave" surname (and fewer still of "Colgreve"). Colgrave seems to have come from the English Midlands around Sheffield and I would be very pleased if someone could help throw more light on this question. Of course it could be "Coal-Grieve" and an occupational name for the overseer of mining operations. Whereas this might be true of the Sheffield family it is much less likely in the case of this Carta because of its date: 1412 and the wording and context doesn't seem a plausible support for that argument. Reaney is not much help as he doesn't recognise "Colgrave" or any variation as a surname (although it undoubtably exists).

Scottishaw is likely to mean "King's wood" and Gaylis is now modern Gailes on the Ayrshire coast right next to the then Royal Stewart Castle, residence and permanent home at Dundonald.

This is a castle built in Moray Speyside by one Freskin sent up from Ayrshire to Feudalise the north. It has an uncanny resemblance to Caldwell. Is it fact a castle that was built in the highlands by lowlanders or the "Lowland Welsh":

http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/pls/portal/newcanmore.details_gis?inumlink=16841

www.duffus.com/freskin.htm

There are other references just search Google under "Gauldwell" and "Castle". I will have to find and post the link to the reference that is quite specific that Freskin was not only from Ayrshire but brought his followers from there also. He was originally of Flemish stock but already a few generations Scottish.

Caldwell may then just be a generic name for the lowland peoples of Strathclyde that occupied the areas of Ayrshire and Renfrew: the "Wallys" or more specifically the "Gauld-wallys". This would answer why the name is relatively common and the geographic areas where it is found.

Welcome to the notion that our name is just the unromantic term "Lowland-Welsh", aka "Lowland-Briton", or just plain "Lowlander". There is a notion of respect there in that our nickname Carwall possibly meant "fortress of the welsh" or "strength of the welsh" or simply "castle-walls". Perhaps the original Strathclyde Britons held the iron age fort on Walls Hill as their postion of strength and capital and those that came from the surrounding area were the lowland-welsh from the castle of the welsh.

The English name either came from local place names, Chad's well pilgrims, or followers of the Scots Earl of Huntingdon on his English estates.

"Something of the extent of the 7th-century Welsh in the English kingdoms may in time be learnt from the study of place names. Places whose Roman British names are preserved are few; apart from large towns, they are naturally most numerous in the West Riding, in the Welsh marches and in other border regions. That the English called willages of the Welsh or British are considerably more numerous.

....

Much more numerous are those described as Wealh Tun, Welshman's village, Walton and the like.

....

[In Mercia and Northumbria] where free Welshmen remained unassimilated to a later date [the term "Wealh" meant "Welsh" not bondsman or serf]

....

but when they derive from Wealh, they indicate the homes of Welshmen who lived among the early English

....

Their study has been inhibited by a naive and somewhat nantionalistic reluctance to admit the existence of a considerable Welsh element among the ancestors of the modern English."

"The Age of Arthur - a history of the British Isles from 350-650" by John Morris Pheonix Paperback published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson reissued 2004 ISBN 1 84212 477 3 p314-315

From this we might deduce that names ending in "-wall" or "-well" might reference the English word "Wealh" and might have nothing to do with springs or walls and a lot to do with being a Celt or "Welsh" to the local English settlers.

Farms, mainly on the south side of the Irvine River that have connnections to the Caldwell family. This is based on help from David Caldwell of Manitoba and some of my own research.

It is far from conclusive or complete. Nor does it "prove" anything.

Gailes (Gaylis) is marked on the map but was formerly much larger and covered the area of the current army barracks.

Todriggs is not actually named on the map but still exists ("Kennels" next to Earlston). Old Rome is also marked. Inchgotrick is the farm of David's family and his ancestors were on Annanhill as well. My family once lived at "Wee Inchgotrick" formerly known as "Inchgotrick Mains" which is an older property and not marked but is between Inchgotrick and Treesbanks House. "Mains" apparently means the desmaine farm serving a castle. For the benefit of David Andrew C I have marked Annandale.

Elleslie is also not marked on the map but I have penciled in the name where it still exists next to Annanhill. There is a fair body of opinion that this is actually the birthplace of Sir William Wallace the Scots patriot and not Elderslie near Paisley where it is also attributed. If it were at Elderslie then that is also in "Caldwell Country".

Circumstance surrounding the story of Wallace's life would favour Ellerslie near Riccarton as both his mother and father were from this area and his family were the Wallaces of Riccarton. Furthermore he seems to have spent his early life in the Riccarton area David seems to think that there was a Wallace castle on the site now occupied by Treesbanks House.

Dundonald Castle - the seat of the early Stewart Kings is shown on a crag just west of the village of Dundonald.

Map: Part of Ordinance Survey Landranger Series 1:50 000 Ayr & Kilmarnock Sheet 70 (used for academic illustrative purposes only - copyright is acknowledged)

Highlighted ar farms in the Beith - Lochwinnoch area that I have found and have family lines mapped by the Late Mrs Lesley Anne Gordon. There are other names I have not traced and the farm property "Auchangowan" is somewhere under Barcraigs Reservoir I believe.

Map: Part of Ordinance Survey Landranger Series 1:50 000 Firth of Clyde Sheet 63 (used for academic illustrative purposes only - copyright is acknowledged)

They were all sooo cool in their sunglasses :)

Map: Page 118 "Ayrshire the story of a county" John Strawhorn AANHS 1975 (used for academic illustrative purposes only - copyright is acknowledged)

Map: Page 46 "Ayrshire the story of a county" John Strawhorn AANHS 1975 (used for academic illustrative purposes only - copyright is acknowledged)

Francis, Alan and John continued as family names in our branch derived from John of Galston. But Charles and Thomas did not. This signifies that Thomas and Charles may have been more remote names or that children of that name had died young. The branch from John's brother Allan used Charles for a while.

The most likely reason for abandonment of a family name was the superstitious dread when an earlier bearer of the name had come to an untimely death.

The fact that Charles and Thomas went early in our line may have been because John's brothers of that name had died young. Perhaps Alan's son Charles had been born before his uncle Charles died. This is all mere supposition of course but there are other facts:

Alan stopped after John's son Alan was killed in a mining accident shortly after he and his family had emigrated to Nova Scotia. John stopped in our line when our last John died at age 21 in 1899. Just about the right age and time to have been a Boer War victim. Francis stopped after our last Francis was killed at Kuts in modern Iraq during the first world war.

Thomas was resurrected for my grandfather three generations after it had been previously used in our family. There was an excuse - he was the 13th child! It became a family name again.

Being a grandfather doesn't bother me but being a great-uncle seems terribly old

Grace & Liam in Bendigo

My great grandfather was Joseph Caldwell and his wife Janet Wilson. He was the third son of three and about mid way down the family of eight children. He was still at school when his father died at age 45 leaving his widow with seven surviving children aged 21 to about 3 years old. The elder two sons were already down the pits helping support the family.

Matthew, the eldest son, married and moved away to the Lugar region and also died young. His widow and all their children emigrated to Gympie Queensland in 1884 on the "Shenir". They were part of a recruiting drive for when the mines went underground for gold. Apparently they knew Andrew Fisher from Crosshouse and he may have been instrumental in attracting them to Australia. Andrew Fisher went on to become Prime Minister of Australia. The eldest son (also Matthew) became a mine manager in Gympie.

John, the second son, was unknown but recently we found that he had moved to New Craighall Colliery near Musselburgh in the Lothians. He later mined near Wemyss in Fife where he died. His widow returned to Kilmarnock where she died at an advanced age.

Joseph my ancestor is a puzzle. The son of a poor coal mining family somehow first started as a coal miner then somehow became a school headmaster and eventually a "Manufacturer of Aerated Waters". Originally living at "Wee Inchgotrick" just outside Riccarton they moved to Academy Street and then to "Riverbank House" in Greenholm Street sometime around the end of the 1800's. Whilst all this was going on they managed to rear a family of 13 children and died a reasonably wealthy man.

There is someone standing at the door of Riverbank House in this picture and I presume it was my Great-Grandfather Joseph who then owned it and lived there until his death in 1917.

I visited Riverbank House in 1957 with my father and cousin when my Great Aunt Jean was still living there. She had never married and had lived there on her "own" since about 1925-26 when the family had split up Joseph's assets.

As a 12 year old child I remember it as quite an imposing place, more so than this picture might suggest. There were steps up from the street and a large imposing front door. Inside there was a large broad staircase leading to the upper floor with broad passages on either side. The right hand passage seemed to lead to a kitchen area whilst the left one led to a door then a yard in which the factory was situated. To the left and right there were what I felt were enormous rooms that were not being lived in. There was a "younger" woman living there and I have taken her to be Aunt Jean's housekeeper.

Jean's greeting was cheery enough and we were told to "go on bye" and have a look at the factory premises.

There is a right-angle bend in Greenholm Street right at this point and the factory premises opened on the the street around the corner.

My grandfather was the youngest in this family, only Francis (Helen's child) was younger. John died in 1899. If he is in the picture it must have been (logically) taken before his death. If he is not then the picture might be a little later (say 1899) and Francis is the young child at front making Tom at back left, Adam second from right at back and James at front right. But James and Joseph were a few years apart in age and that doesn't seem to fit the picture nor does it sit well with Agnes' apparent age. Consequently I think that John is in and Francis out and the date is 1898 which seems to match with the studios the photographer was operating at the time.

This is a picture taken about 1896-1898 of the "Lemonade Caldwell" family of Joseph Caldwell, Kilmarnock

Photographer:
"COOK, Joseph. At 61 King Street, KILMARNOCK, in 1895/97 and 1898-1900 Directories. 1898-1900 Directory advert gives additional addresses in Paisley [32 High Street] and Glasgow [11 West Nile Street]. Advert in ASH 20.10.1899 gives the three addresses."

I believe this to be a picture of my grandfather Tom Caldwell with a cart load of "lemonade" sometime around 1900.

Joseph Caldwell about 1898

Janet (Wilson) Caldwell aboout 1898

Tom Caldwell of Thomas Caldwell & Sons Aerated Water Manufacturers "Shawbank" East Shaw Street Kilmarnock
Date of photograph unknown but possibly late 1920's to early 1930's

Tom Caldwell & his wife Mary Drysdale possibly at "Shawbank" - late 1940's

My father Jimmy and his sister Mary with another brother Matt at Shawbank 1942, Second cousins of John Thomas Caldwell in Australia (pictured elsewhere).

My earliest known ancestors were Alan Caldwell and Janet Guthrie who christened their children at St Quivox near Ayr in Ayrshire.

I do not know where either were born or where and when they married or where and when they died. Their last recorded child (a second Thomas) was christened at Dundonald and I am led to believe that Alan and Janet were living at a place called Old Rome at that time.

From the names of their children fmaily names of fathers mothers and grandparents can be guessed at.

Children:

1. Janet b 1776 married Andrew McMurtrie (I think that Andrew might have been the gardener for John Taylor who owned the coal mines at Newton on Ayr). They named their first child John Taylor McMurtrie. The child was born the year John Taylor died and Andrew and family are also listed as living in the gardener's cottage on the John Taylor property. Descendents of this family settled at Dreghorn.
2. Jean b 1777 no more is known
3. John b 1780 d 1855 m (1) Mary Morton (2)Agnes McClanachan - there were 13 children all told - the second son was my ancestor. The children were all born at Galston, Matthew's family moved to Riccarton and many of the rest were prolific in Galston but most have "disappeared". I have found ne branch in Gore New Zealand and another in Nova Scotia, yet another, closer branch ended up emigrating to Gympie in Queensland.
4. Alan b 1780 m Janet Boyle known son Charles - this family settled at Dreghorn
5. Francis b 1783 no more is known
6. Thomas b 1786 (died young)
7. Charles b 1787 may have married Christian Murdoch at Ochiltree
9. Thomas (II) b 1789 no more is known (perhaps he is the Thomas Caldwell who married Janet Wallace on 17 August 1823 at Galston but he would have been 34 at the time - possible)

It looks like the parents moved to Old Rome sometime between 1787 and 1789 when the second Thomas was born. There were Miner's Rows at Old Rome and Alan snr would probably be working a pit nearby when the seams ran out at Newton Upon Ayr.

The elder sons seem to have carried on in the coalmining trade and the three younger sons have not been found. There is a possibility that I have found Charles' marriage as described.