The derivation of this name from the old English ‘cealdwielle’, meaning ‘cold stream’, makes it impossible to state a definite territorial origin for the name. Certainly, old lands of that name are found in Renfrewshire, and the oldest record of a family bearing this name coming to prominence is in that district. Black records William de Caldwell holding land in 1342. Nisbet states that the Caldwells of that Ilk wore on their coat of arms four bars wavy to show water related to the name. He states that ‘this family continued for many hundreds of years in good reputation, by inter marriage with many honourable families and ended of late in the person of John Caldwell of that Ilk, one of the commissioners for the shire of Renfrew about the year 1693’. A branch of the family had emigrated to County Fermanagh in Ulster, where they purchased a fine castle which they renamed Castle Caldwell. Sir James Caldwell fought for William of Orange in Donegal in 1690. The name was also carried by settlers to the New World. Caldwell, New Jersey was the birth place in 1837 of Grover Cleveland, President of the United States. Erskine Caldwell, who died in 1987, was one of Americas greatest novelists.