My Genealogy Hound

Hon. William P. Caldwell, a much honored citizen of Weakley County, Tenn., was born at Christmasville, Carroll Co., Tenn., November 8, 1832; was educated at McLemoreville, Tenn., and at Princeton, Ky. He entered the law department of the Cumberland University, and began practicing his profession at Dresden, Tenn., in 1855. He has been a resident of Weakley County all his life, and has practiced in that and Obion Counties for the past thirty years. He was elected to the State Legislature of Tennessee, in 1857 and 1870, and served on the Douglas electoral ticket in 1860. He was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention in 1868, and was elected to the Forty-fourth Congress, and was re-elected to the Forty-fifth Congress as a Democrat, receiving 14,799 votes against 6,509 votes for Folk, an Independent Democrat. Mr. Caldwell cast his first presidential vote for James Buchanan. He is a Mason, a K. of H., and a member of the O. O. of H. He was married in 1854 to Ada B., daughter of Hon. John A. Gardner. Mrs. Caldwell was born in Weakley County, in 1835, and is the mother of five children: Dr. L. W. (a resident of Sulphur Bluff, Texas), John A. (a lawyer and partner with his father), Frederick J. (who is a messenger of the Southern Express Co., and a resident of Memphis, Tenn.), Will D. and Enloe V. Mr. Caldwell and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His parents, David P. and Elizabeth (Edwards) Caldwell, were born in North Carolina, and Dixon County, Tenn., in 1801 and 1811, and died in 1862 and 1857, respectively. At the age of twenty-five years, the father moved from Stewart to Carroll County, thence to Weakley County, in 1836. He was postmaster of Dresden, during Van Buren’s administration, and in 1841 moved to his farm, where he afterward resided.