My Genealogy Hound

HARRIET V. CALDWELL; P. O. and residence, Piqua. Harriet V. Caldwell, a native of Kentucky, born near Lexington, in 1802, is the daughter of Caleb Kemper; her parents removed to Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati, while she was yet a child; her father was a teacher in the schools of Cincinnati for a number of years, and her grandfather Kemper was the first Presbyterian minister who preached in Cincinnati. She was married to Matthew Caldwell Nov. 7, 1823, and soon after they started for their new home, then in the woods, now Piqua. They first set up housekeeping on what is now the northeast corner of Ash and Caldwell streets, where they lived upward of twenty years, then removed to the opposite corner south, where the widow still resides, his decease having occurred April 26, 1864. Mr. Caldwell was the son of Matthew Caldwell, Sr., who was among the first purchasers of land in this vicinity. Matthew, Jr., was a farmer, and continued to farm until his lands were needed for town lots; then platted his farm, and sold it out in lots; the regularity of his plat, rectangular streets, general appearance and convenience of access, shows more wisdom and forethought than was exercised by some who made additions to the town. The present high school building occupies a portion of the old farm, and Mrs. Caldwell now buys groceries where her husband cleared the ground and cultivated crops in her younger days; she has lived to see the hand-cards and spinning-wheels superseded by carding and fulling-mills, and these, in turn, by the modern woolen factories. When she came to Piqua, in 1823, they traveled in wagons over what would now be considered impassable roads; about 1840, she made a visit to her parents, near Cincinnati, going on the “canal packet,” a great improvement over the wagon and stagecoach of former years; when, in 1857, the D. & M. R. R. being completed, she was able to leave home at 6 A. M., and place a jug of fresh cream on her mother’s dinner table, on Walnut Hills, she felt that the climax was reached, and all were delighted. Mrs. C. is now an old lady, and, while she takes pleasure in recounting the olden times, is grateful for the privileges and improvements with which modern days are blessed; she has been a quiet, unassuming but useful Christian woman and mother, raising a family of four children, three of whom are living—Ann Elizabeth, now Mrs. James Cox, of Redwing, Minn.; Jennie, now Mrs. Thomas Gray, resident of Piqua, and James K., a substantial farmer of Washington Township.