City of Caldwell
Caldwell, Burleson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1840 by Lewis L. Chiles, a veteran of Battle of San Jacinto. Named for Mathew "Old Paint" Caldwell, Indian fighter and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. This was county seat, Milam County, in 1845; since 1846 county seat of Burleson County. Home, Burleson County Fair. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Caldwell was founded in 1840 by Lewis L. Chiles, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, and named for Mathew 'Old Paint' Caldwell, an Indian fighter and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. It served as county seat of Milam County in 1845 and has been the seat of Burleson County since 1846. The town is home to the Burleson County Fair.
Why it matters
Its founding reflects the westward spread of settlement in the Republic of Texas and the men of San Jacinto who built its first towns.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1840 Texas was an independent country. The Republic of Texas was only four years old, having won its independence from Mexico in 1836. Its government was short on money and its borders were disputed, but it had plenty of land, and it used that land to attract settlers. Veterans of the Revolution, newcomers from the American South and families looking for cheap farmland pushed steadily west and north from the older settlements near the coast.
That expansion was violent and uncertain. The Texas frontier was contested ground, and American Indian nations fought to hold land and hunting grounds against the growing tide of settlement. Towns founded in these years were often small clusters of cabins and stores, and whether they survived depended on the roads, the rivers and the courthouse.
Within a few years, everything changed again. Texas joined the United States in 1845, and the new state legislature began dividing its huge early counties into smaller ones. Caldwell's history in the 1840s follows those shifts: first a Republic town, then a county seat under the new state, then the seat of a brand-new county.
People & events
The town's founder, Lewis L. Chiles, had fought at the Battle of San Jacinto. That short, decisive fight on April 21, 1836 ended with the defeat of Santa Anna's army and secured Texas independence. For the rest of their lives, San Jacinto veterans carried a special standing in Texas, and many used it to become landowners, officials and town builders. Chiles was one of them, and he founded this town in 1840.
He named it for Mathew Caldwell, a well-known figure of the era. Caldwell was one of the delegates who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in March 1836. He was also famous as a frontier fighter, the kind of leader settlers called on during clashes with American Indian nations. His nickname, "Old Paint," is said to have come from his distinctive appearance, though the stories behind it vary.
Caldwell soon mattered politically. In 1845 it served as the county seat of Milam County, which then covered a huge area. In 1846 the legislature created Burleson County, and Caldwell became its seat, a role it has held ever since. Its courthouse square has been at the center of local government for most of Texas's history as a state. Today the town also hosts the Burleson County Fair, a gathering with deep roots in the area's farming life.
Its place in the American story
Caldwell is a small example of one of the biggest stories in nineteenth-century America: westward expansion. Texas's path was unusual. It was a revolution, then an independent republic, then annexation. That annexation helped lead to the U.S.-Mexican War and to the country growing all the way to the Pacific.
The founding also shows how the new republic's heroes turned into its builders. San Jacinto veterans and the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not only remembered, they helped lay out the towns, counties and courthouses that would make Texas a state. Naming a town for Mathew Caldwell tied everyday life to the founding story.
That expansion also came at a heavy cost to the American Indian peoples who had lived on and traveled across this land. A frontier town like Caldwell is a reminder that the growth of the United States involved both hopeful new settlement and real conflict and displacement.
If you visit
Caldwell is a friendly small Texas county seat, and the marker is a good reason to linger. Start near the courthouse square, the center of civic life since 1846, and look at the older commercial buildings around it. Their brick fronts reflect the generations of farming prosperity that followed the town's frontier beginnings.
The drive is part of the appeal. Burleson County is rolling farm and ranch country between the Brazos and the Post Oak Savannah, and you can easily imagine it as the frontier Chiles knew in 1840. If you arrive during the Burleson County Fair, you will see the community's agricultural traditions in action.
Caldwell also fits nicely into a longer tour of Texas independence sites. Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Declaration Mathew Caldwell signed was adopted, is in the broader region. Pairing the two gives you both ends of the story: the promise made in 1836 and the towns that grew from it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Lewis L. Chiles
- · Mathew Caldwell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell
Caldwell, TX
This Presbyterian congregation was gathered by the Rev. Hugh Wilson, a pioneering missionary who carried his faith across the rough Texas frontier. Though the first surviving record dates to 1850, the church likely formed soon after Caldwell itself was founded in 1840, and in the 1880s its members worshiped in the local Methodist building. A fire destroyed their first sanctuary in 1906, but the congregation endured as a link to the earliest days of Burleson County.
First United Methodist Church of Caldwell
Caldwell, TX
Organized in 1840, this Methodist congregation is among the oldest in Texas, once counted as one of twelve appointments on the Nashville Circuit during the days of the Republic. In 1841 the Republic granted the church a wooded grove as a building site, and after Caldwell became its own circuit in 1852 the first sanctuary rose in 1854. By 1890 the growing congregation had built anew and hosted the Texas Methodist Conference; the present building was raised in 1927 on that historic 1841 ground.
First Baptist Church
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Founded as Dove Church in 1843 in the home of Laban Rice, this congregation was organized by noted frontier ministers R. E. B. Baylor and Noah Byars, the latter serving as first pastor. Among those ordained here was the influential Rev. B. H. Carroll; after several sanctuaries, two lost to fire, the present building rose in 1928-29.
Warren Lodge No. 56, A.F. & A.M.
Caldwell, TX
Freemasonry took root in Caldwell soon after Burleson County's creation in 1846, when nine Masons petitioned for a lodge and met in the county courthouse to install their first officers in 1849. Chartered in 1850 as Warren Lodge No. 56—by local tradition honoring the Revolutionary patriot Dr. Joseph Warren—the lodge counted among its early members a future sheriff, the courthouse contractor, and surveyor George B. Erath, who platted Caldwell and later served in the Texas Senate. The Masons built their hall in 1854, laid the courthouse cornerstone in 1889, and founded a public cemetery in 1890.