Caldwell

• Seneca LakeBuilt 1937 · 3,550 acres

• Capell L. WeemsPerson · 1860-1913

How Caldwell began

Caldwell was surveyed and platted in December 1854, and founded in 1857, on land belonging to Joseph and Samuel Caldwell along the West Fork of Duck Creek, after the site was offered as a donation to win the county-seat contest for the six-year-old Noble County (Sarahsville had held the seat since 1851). The Marietta and Pittsburgh Railroad (later the Cleveland and Marietta) reached the village in 1872 and oil money carried it through a boom in the 1880s and 1890s, when it supported four newspapers, three churches and a woolen mill; the boom faded with the county's oil reserves in the early twentieth century. Caldwell remains the county seat, with a 1933-34 Renaissance Revival courthouse standing over its downtown.

Settled 1814 (area), platted 1854 (December 20-21, by George Bell for Samuel and Joseph Caldwell); town founded 1857, by Joseph and Samuel Caldwell, who owned the town site.

Where the name comes from

Named for Joseph and Samuel Caldwell, the original owners of the town site, in gratitude after they donated land to secure the county seat for the new town. Samuel Caldwell, son of early settler Robert Caldwell of Chester County, Pennsylvania, had advocated for the formation of Noble County itself, organized in 1851.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail, mound or treaty-cession record specific to the village site of Caldwell was found in the sources we checked. Caldwell sits in the West Fork Duck Creek valley in the Muskingum River watershed, land that passed to the United States under treaties predating the 1795 Treaty of Greenville (whose boundary line ran well to the north, along the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum) and that opened to settlement through the Ohio Company's Marietta-area purchase. The historic nations of the wider region — Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo and Miami — hunted and traveled the Muskingum valley before removal.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape (Delaware), Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Miami.

Timeline

1. 1814 — Settlers, including members of the Caldwell family, were already living in the area that would become the village, though the town itself was not yet laid out.
2. 1832 — Samuel Caldwell and his wife Sarah Brownrigg Caldwell built the house at East and Locust Streets that survives as the oldest house in the village, now known as the Samuel Caldwell House.
3. 1851 — Noble County was organized on March 11, the last of Ohio's 88 counties, from parts of Guernsey, Monroe, Morgan and Washington counties; Sarahsville, not Caldwell, was named the first county seat.
4. 1854 — Caldwell was surveyed and platted on December 20 and 21 on land of Joseph and Samuel Caldwell, the site chosen for the new county seat; the town was founded in 1857, and the county offices moved there from Sarahsville in 1858.
5. 1872 — The Marietta and Pittsburgh Railroad, later the Cleveland and Marietta, reached Caldwell.
6. 1886 — Riding an oil boom, Caldwell supported four newspaper offices, three churches, a bank, and manufacturers including the Caldwell Woollen Mills, which employed twenty-five workers making blankets and other wool goods.
7. 1933 — Construction began on the current Noble County Courthouse, a Renaissance Revival building designed by Charles J. Marr and built partly of brick made at nearby Ava to hold down cost; it was completed in 1934 for about $183,000 and remains the largest building in Caldwell.
8. 1939 — A photograph of a worker tending the Caldwell Water Works lime feeders, later used as the cover of the village's 2019 Consumer Confidence Report, shows the plant already running lime treatment by this date.
9. 2004 — The Noble County Jail and Sheriff's Office at 419 West Street, built in Queen Anne style, was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

A donated town site wins the county seat

When Noble County was carved out of four neighboring counties in 1851, Sarahsville, near the geographic center of the new county, was named the seat. But the arrangement did not hold: Joseph and Samuel Caldwell offered land on the West Fork of Duck Creek for a new town, on the condition it be made the county seat. The offer was accepted; the town was platted in December 1854, founded in 1857, and named for the family that gave the land. Sarahsville's brief run as county seat ended when the county offices moved in 1858, and in 1884 a fire destroyed nearly every business in that older village, further sealing the shift of importance to Caldwell.

Oil, then decline

Noble County sat over part of the Macksburg-Lower Salem oil field, and Caldwell prospered through the last two decades of the nineteenth century on the back of it: four newspapers, three churches, a bank, and mills and manufacturers filled the growing village, and the railroad's arrival in the 1870s gave producers a route to eastern and Great Lakes markets. As the county's oil reserves were pumped down through the early twentieth century, that prosperity faded, and Caldwell settled into the smaller role of a rural county seat it has held since, peaking at 2,082 residents in 1970 and standing at 1,691 in the 2020 census.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · ohiohistorycentral.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · hmdb.org · remarkableohio.org · avalon.law.yale.edu · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org

Every historic place in Noble County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Caldwell Village79% of residentsWolf Run Lake (primary) + Caldwell Lake (backup reservoirs)
• Pure Water Corporation11% of residentsWolf Run Lake (primary) + Caldwell Lake (backup reservoirs)
• Noble County Water Authority5% of residentsWolf Run Lake (primary) + Caldwell Lake (backup reservoirs)
• Pure Water System 23% of residentsWolf Run Lake (primary) + Caldwell Lake (backup reservoirs)
• Noble Water Company2% of residentsWolf Run Lake (primary) + Caldwell Lake (backup reservoirs)
• Clear Water Corporation0% of residentsWolf Run Lake (primary) + Caldwell Lake (backup reservoirs)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Public schools (1)

Public libraries (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (2)

Police stations (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-12-17

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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