Background
Joseph Caldwell was born on April 21, 1773 in Lamington, New Jersey, United States, two days after his father's death. ; the youngest of the three children of Joseph Caldwell and Rachel (Harker) Caldwell.
Joseph Caldwell was born on April 21, 1773 in Lamington, New Jersey, United States, two days after his father's death. ; the youngest of the three children of Joseph Caldwell and Rachel (Harker) Caldwell.
The family, in somewhat straitened financial circumstances, moved to Princeton when Joseph was eleven years old. There he entered the grammar school which had the personal attention of Dr. John Witherspoon, for several years the distinguished head of the College of New Jersey (Princeton). His early education was interrupted by the removal of the family to Newark and later still to Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth). But in 1787, when Joseph was fourteen years old, he reentered the grammar school at Princeton and a few months later entered the college from which he was graduated in the class of 1791 at the age of nineteen.
For a short time Caldwell taught in a school for young children and later was assistant in an academy. In 1795 he was made a tutor in mathematics in Princeton, and in 1796 he was called to the professorship of mathematics in the University of North Carolina which had opened its doors in 1795. In 1804 he was elected president. In 1812 he retired from the presidency to resume the chair of mathematics in order to devote more time to study and teaching. In 1817 he was induced to resume the chief office of the institution and in that position he continued during the remainder of his life. In the spring and summer of 1824 he went to Europe to secure philosophical and scientific apparatus and books for the University library.
Caldwell's European experience also aroused his imagination and interest on the subject of internal improvements. His very advanced and practical views, which were set out in a series of articles (1828), over the pen name of "Carlton, " in which he urged the state to provide transportation facilities, gained for him the name of the "father of internal improvements" in North Carolina.
In 1832, three years before his death, he published a series of eleven Letters on Popular Education Addressed to the People of North Carolina. In these writings he described the backward educational condition of the state which he charged to the "fatal delusion" that taxation was "contrary to the genius of republican government. "
In 1813 he served North Carolina as scientific expert in running the boundary line between North Carolina and South Carolina.
In 1830 Caldwell erected, out of his personal funds, for which he was reimbursed by the University trustees a few days before his death, a building in which use could be made of the telescope and other astronomical instruments which he had brought from Europe. This was the first observatory established in connection with any educational institution in the United States. A monument to his memory was erected on the campus of the University of North Carolina in 1858.
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Caldwell was a man of deeply religious nature, had been licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New Brunswick while he was at Princeton, and was an effective if not eloquent preacher.
He criticized the state for its failure to provide schools and suggested plans for public elementary, secondary, and higher education, provisions for the training of teachers, and other features of a modern school system.
Dignified and often stern in manner, he was described as "strong of arm and swift of foot, " capable of inspiring respect and confidence and, in the disorderly, fear. A spirited and militant controversialist, utterly fearless, and a keen analyst, he was often driven into bitter partisan controversies by attacks upon himself or upon the University for alleged aristocratic views or tendencies.
He was an effective teacher and a scientist of wide and disciplined knowledge.
Caldwell was married twice: in 1804 to Susan Rowan of Fayetteville, who died three years later; and in 1809 to Mrs. Helen (Hogg) Hooper of Hillsboro, the widow of William Hooper, son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
