Caldwell, Francis Xavier

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Larry L. Kulisek, “CALDWELL, FRANCIS XAVIER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/caldwell_francis_xavier_8E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Militia officer, politician, office holder, justice of the peace, and businessman; b. 4 May 1792 in Detroit, son of William Caldwell and Suzanne Baby, daughter of Jacques Baby, dit Dupéront; m. 10 Jan. 1831 Mary Frances Réaume, widow of Francis Baby, and they had a son; d. 5 June 1851 in Malden Township, Upper Canada.
    • Francis Xavier Caldwell was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and educated in either Detroit or Amherstburg, Upper Canada, where his family had settled in 1782 or 1783. At the age of 20 he joined his father (a former captain in Butler’s Rangers) and two brothers to serve with the British army in the War of 1812. Promoted ensign in the 1st Essex Militia on 12 July 1812, Francis participated that year in the capture of Detroit and in 1813, as an officer in a ranger corps commanded by his father, in several major battles on the western frontier: Frenchtown, Miamis River, Fort Meigs, and Fort Stephenson. Retreating from Amherstburg when the fortunes of war were reversed, the Caldwells escaped death or capture at Moraviantown in October 1813 but were faced with the realization that they could not return home again as long as the American occupation of the western part of Upper Canada continued.
    • Upon his father’s death in 1822, Caldwell inherited a substantial amount of property, including water-lots on the Detroit River in front of the family homestead. To this property he added loyalist and militia grants, amassing nearly 2,500 acres of land in the Western District. He also became involved with his brothers in improving the so-called Pike Road, which ran into Amherstburg across Caldwell property, and in the late 1830s he secured the rest of the water-lots fronting his property. In 1831 he had married Mary Frances Baby, a widow with two sons, and, aided perhaps by his close association through birth and now marriage with the prestigious Baby clan, the growth in his stature continued. Appointed collector of customs for Amherstburg in 1831 and a magistrate two years later, by 1834 Caldwell was ready to enter politics.
    • Responding to the call from the Canadian Emigrant of Sandwich (Windsor) for “independent and loyal representatives of tried patriotism,” Caldwell ran in 1834 for the House of Assembly in the two-seat riding of Essex, winning easily with John Alexander Wilkinson, an incumbent. The same journal accepted them as “staunch loyalists, friends of internal improvement and rational reform,” qualities certain to make them “worthy of conspicuous place in Mackenzie’s Black List.”
    • Despite his reversal of fortune, Francis Caldwell had remained a respected member of the community, reaping the prestige of the family’s fighting tradition, which continued to grow over the years. Local accounts may have exaggerated or confused some of his feats, but Caldwell had time and again risked his life for his country. In a testimonial to his services, signed by 89 of the area’s most illustrious personages upon his retirement from politics in 1841, this “gallant and brave” man was honoured with the supreme compliment of his time: “always in the forefront in the field.”
  • Son of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=1129
  • Find A Grave: Cannot locate.