Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

1747 - 1759 - 1760

James Caldwell (Snr) of Beith and Nantwich - aged 38

Hannah Caldwell (ne Armstrong)

Margaret Caldwell (later Sherratt) - aged 10

Anne Caldwell - aged 9

James Caldwell, later of Linley Wood – aged 0

Tommy 

Peggy 

21 January 1759
Birth of James Caldwell, presumably at Nantwich.

1759-61
Joseph Priestly - Unitarian Minister in Nantwich, ran a school - In his autobiography he says -
In my congregation there was hardly more than one family in which I could spend a leisure hour with much satisfaction, and that was Mr James Caldwell, a Scotchman. Indeed, several of the travelling Scotchmen who frequented the place, but made no long stay at any one time, were men of very good sense’.

Joseph Priestly ran a school in a adjacent building to Sweetbriar Hall, teaching English grammar, geography and natural philosophy. Joseph P. boarded with John Eddowes, tobacconist and grocer in High Street Nantwich. Joseph P. wrote a new book on grammar in 1761 which was very successful - 'The Rudiments of English Grammar.'

In 1761 he started teaching at the Warrington Academy, nust north of Nantwich. In 1780 became a member of the Lunar Society, an elite group of local gentlemen, Dissenters and industrialists including Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin, James Watt and Matthew Boulton. Thomas Bentley was a trustee, helping to set up the Warrington Academy in 1757, and in 1762 assisted in building the Octagon Chapel in Temple Court, Liverpool. Started working with Josiah Wedgwood in 1762

Warrington was also the centre of a linen making industry, 'a sort of table linen called huk-a-back, or huk-a-bek' Many pieces of this linen are sold here very market-day as amounts to five hundred pounds value. Later in Warrington's history the manufacture of sail-cloth, or poldavy, used in the Navy was introduced and rose to great height, so that half the sail cloth used in the Navy was reputed to have been made there. Warrington itself could be considered a port town, on the Mersey.

Image of Warrington Academy by Dr.James Kendrick Jr -

Warrington Academy. Joseph Priestly went to work there after his time in Nantwich. The Warrington Academy did not last very long but had quite a history to it. James Caldwell was theoretically not enrolled there but seems to have benefited from it anyway, probably via Joseph Priestly. 

Thomas Bentley - told him (16 March, 1762) : “ The Academy owes much, almost every- thing, to your care”, and an old student of Warrington afterwards declared : “ The Academy was his favourite child.”

From Priestley’s former school at Nantwich came William Wilkinson, shortly to become his brother-in-law, and at least another youth. (?)

Matthew Turner (d.178)

It is not known how and when he (Joseph Priestly)  accumulated this lore, nor what university honoured him with the doctorate generally credited to him, but he practised surgery at Liverpool and lectured on Anatomy. One of his patients was Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, to whom he intro- duced one who became his most intimate friend and partner in business, Thomas Bentley, a leading Liverpool supporter of the Academy. Turner was introduced to the Academy by Priestley, the friend of both Wedgwood and Bentley.