Sometimes when researching the pieces on this site it has been necessary to journey to the countries in question and those information-gathering trips have taken me to some wonderful places and allowed me to meet just as wonderful people. But sometimes the information has come to me. It has simply landed in my lap and and this, the story of John Caldwell, is one of them.

One evening, indeed overnight, an email came in and when in the morning I opened it I found a treasure-trove that had been sitting in Glasgow for a century. It, the email, had been sent by John Caldwell's great-grandson, Kenneth and it contained not just material John had brought back with him after forty years working on the railways in Argentina but his memories of the role he had in the Scottish game both before he left for Buenos Aires, Rosario and the Argentine interior and glimpses of his continued involvement on his return. 

In an interview recorded in a local newspaper article in 1934, when he was over seventy years old, he recalled almost the earliest days of football not just in Partick, where he was born, but in Scotland in general. He thoght he was at the time of publication the oldest, surviving member of Partick Thistle F.C. He was certsinly amongst the oldest. But his memory goes back further, to Partick F.C., formed in 1875 and not just the team of, amongst others, Fergus Suter and James Love,  but also the original, senior club in the area. In fact, it is said,  Caldwell was first a member of Partick. And the Partick Thistle he would join, would on formation at the turn of 1875/6 start there too before in 1880, move to Jordanvale Park, now the site of church buildings at the corner of Dumbarton Road and Edzell Street, before taking up residence at Muir Park in 1883 and Inchview in 1885, when Partick, whose ground it had been, folded.

John Caldwell had been born in April 1863. His father, Robert, came from Houston in Renfrewshire and was Brass Finisher. His mother, Catherine, was a Partick native. It was there  too that she died in late 1871 aged 32 , at which time John aged 8 with his brothers seemed to have been taken in by their paternal aunts. Certainly, with their father nowhere to be seen, in 1881 he, aged 17, and brother Archibald were in Glasgow and in their care.

When John took to football is unknown. But from the dates it is clear from simple dating that he would have been in his early teens, when both Partick and Partick Thistle FCs came into being, and in his early twenties when Scottish, amateur football had its first Golden Era. 1881 and 1882 saw the national team trounce England home and away by large margins. And it was thought that Caldwell was a forward, a left-winger, or rather in the 2-2-6 formation then used, one of the left-wing pairing, But it turns out he was a left-back, who made his first First Team appearance for Partick Thistle on 20th December 1884 in a 4-4 draw to Dundee Harp. He was thus twenty-one years old and is said to have previously played for Cowlairs.

In fact he was to make a total five appearances for Thistle that same season in a squad that also included Jerry Suter, Fergus's brother, and Tom Maley, brother of Willie and later a Scottish Cup winner with Celtic and a notable manager, particularly at Manchester City and Bradford Park Avenue. But then he seems to have dropped off the radar. The following season there were no appearances. Perhaps he returned to Cowlairs in the fluid way that was the case in that era. Yet he would be back. In 1886-87 he would make twenty appearances, almost half of that season's fixtures, now alongside Suter once more but also Willie Paul.

At that point, aged twenty-three John Caldwell might have thought that for him a career in professional football in England might have been a possibility, as it would be for many of those he played both alongside and against. But he was clearly not regarded as permanent by the club never mind others. In the 1887-8 season, recorded as having returned from a long injury,  he once again became a bit-player. Once more he featured on just five occasions, playing what would be his last game on 25th February 1888, a 3-2 home defeat to Battlefield..   

But that was it, it seems, at least for the senior club. He is then said to re-joined Cowlairs, the team of the Springburn railway works and pertinent to what was to come. As John Caldwell interviewer puts it, in 1889 "he secured an appointment with the railways in Argentina". Presumably there he first worked in Buenos Aires for it was there that quickly he became involved in football in the country's capital. Amongst its British community the game was embedding. Games are recorded from 189, with by the Southern Hemisphere winter of 1891  enough teams to allow the formation of a first league. It consisted of five teams, Buenos Aires FC, Belgrano, the Buenos Aires and Rosario Railway, St. Andrew's and Old Caledonians. And it was these two last teams, which finished the season equal on points, the former that of the Presbyterian church that still exists in the city and was the source of one of the Argentine's major universities, the latter that of the company, Bautaume and Pearson,  that had been contracted to install the local water and sewerage systems.

The Scots influence in St. Andrews is obvious. Bautaume and Pearson employed a large number of Scots too, hence the team name. And the connections with Scotland were strong and surprisingly current. The first Scottish Football League had in April 1891 finished with a similar impasse. Dumbarton and Rangers both had twenty-nine points. A play-off match was decided upon. Played on 21st May it too finished undecided, a 2-2 draw. The title was shared. And just months later eight thousand miles away the solution was replicated. On 13th September Argentina's first champions met and this time there was a victor. St. Andrews defeated Old Caledonians 3-1. Gibson, Scott. Riggs, Angus, Phillips, Smith, White, Clark Sutherland, Wilson and Corsner were defeated 3-1 by Carter, Penman, Waters, Francis, Barnes, A. Buchanan, Moffat, Alex Lamont, one of the three most important figures in the foundation of the Argentine game Morgan, J. Buchanan and a final player of some note back in the old country, twenty-eight year-old John Caldwell. As pictured above he had played the match not in defence but as one of the right-wing pairing. Charles Moffat from inside-left had scored a hat-trick. 

How long John Caldwell stayed in Argentina is unknown. Contracts at that time to South America were normally four years. Certainly my grandfather's to Brazil was. It meant that the Glaswegian may have returned home in 1893, which seems to corroborated by his seeming non-appearance when the Argentine League resumed after a pause that same year and also by the fact that in 1895-6 back in Partick at the Jags he was Secretary.   

However, John Caldwell's association with Argentina was not at an end. In fact he was to spend much of his remaining working life in the country, only returning to Scotland on retirement in 1923 this time from the Central Argentine Railway, based in Rosario, the Argentine second city of two clubs, Newell Old Boys, Messi's first club, and Rosario Central, the first president of which was Colin Bain Calder of Dingwall. Indeed John Caldwell might already have been on his way to the River Plate that same year or shortly after for a second four years, returning in late 1901. He does not seem to be recorded in the census earlier that year. Yet he was without doubt in Scotland in 1902 since in that year in Kilmacolm he married Margaret Moore, although appearing to leave almost immediately, for either Buenos Aires first or directly to Rosario.  The reasoning is simple. In 1903 Margaret gave birth to a son, Robert Reid Caldwell, he named for his grandfather and one of those aunts to have raised his father but she did so in Argentina. And it would be Robert Reid with his parents who can be seen travelling to and from Britain over the next twenty years and would return to Scotland, to marry there and resume the family connection with home. Robert Reid Caldwell, after a working life as a Radio Operative on merchant ships, would die in Glasgow in 1974. John Caldwell himself died in 1942 and back within touching distance of Partick, recorded as a retired Railway Traffic Inspector but for the moment nothing more, although the house is still there and deserves a plaque.

But there are a couple of stories of Caldwell in Scotland and South America. The first is his continued association even on retirement with Glasgow football. When a Peruvian party visited Celtic, Willie Maley, brother of Tom, called on John Caldwell to interpret. Secondly, the second photograph above shows in Argentina an older Caldwell to the right and and a Mr. Buchanan to the left. One wonders if it were J. or A. from that first St. Andrews team or perhaps Walter or Charles from the largely Scots Diasporan first Argentine national team of 1902. And finally there is Caldwell's jacket. It looks as if in the Argentine national hues of light blue and white and he told the story of, on being asked to design a footballing flag, one that was adopted widely, he did so by combining those same national colours with the Cross of St. Andrew. It might be a tale too far, I admit, but fun nevertheless, particularly as John Caldwell, noted footballer on not one but two Continents, might well have had tongue firmly pressed in Glaswegian cheek.

For an enlarged and improved version of this article done in conjunction with the Partick Thistle Archive click on the link below:

http://thethistlearchive.net/campeones-the-john-caldwell-story