Sir John Caldwell 5th Bt

John Caldwell was an Irish baronet born on 16 Aug 1756. He was the son of Sir John Caldwell 4th Bt and Elizabeth Hort. He was commissioned into the King’s Regiment in 1774 serving in North America, specifically the areas of Niagara and Detroit between 1774 and 1780. He was a lieutenant in 1777. He visited Native American villages and learned the local language so that he could take part in tribal councils. He was elected a chief of the Ojibwa tribe who allied themselves to the British in the fight against American colonists. He collected native objects which he took back with him to Ireland, now in the Canadian Museum of History. The portrait was painted in Ireland, showing Caldwell wearing native American dress. The portrait is in the Liverpool Museum. An article by Leslie Reinhardt in Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol 31 (Spring 1998) says this:
‘Perhaps the most extraordinary evidence of Iroquois dress of the time is the portrait of John Caldwell, a British officer who served on the frontier during the war, learned Indian languages and conducted successful negotiations with Indian allies, According to an inscription on the portrait, he is depicted as he appeared at a war council in 1780; …his portrait celebrates a political success, in this case an alliance with the Ojibwas. Although his costume has usually been assumed to be fantastical, or a “picturesque combination of Indian and European clothing”, in fact it is one of the most thoroughly documented depictions of Northern Woodlands Indian costume of the period. Caldwell amassed a collection of Indian artefacts which have almost all been preserved and document the dress in the portrait in exact detail— the silver breast plates, the head scarf covered with silver rings and pendants, the breech cloth, the big silver ear pendants etc.’
The detail, shown below, reveals that Caldwell added his officers' gilt gorget to the silver breast plates.
In 1782 Caldwell was appointed ADC to the Viceroy of India and succeeded to the baronetcy in February 1784 to become 5th Baronet Caldwell of Wellsburrow, co. Fermanagh. He held the office of Governor of County Fermanagh in 1793 and commanded the local militia, later commanding the Belleek Infantry. In 1789 he married Harriet Meynell in Bath, Somerset, and had two daughters, Frances and Louisa. He was Sheriff of County Fermanagh in 1798. He died on 17 June 1830.

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