Thomas Ford Caldicott
Thomas Ford Caldicott [1]
a Baptist minister, was born in the village of Long Buckby, Northamptonshire, England, March 21, 1803. His father was a deacon and lay-preacher of the Baptist Church in that village. The son became a Christian at the age of seventeen. He soon began to preach, having received a license from his Church. Feeling the need, however, of a better preparation for the ministry, he studied for a time in a school of some note in Chipping Norton, and then himself opened a school in Leicester, employing his leisure hours in the study of the languages, under the tuition of a competent teacher. He came to America in 1827, and opened a school in Quebec, preaching on the Sabbath/in the city and its neighborhood. After a time, he became connected with the 79th Highland Regiment, acting as tutor in the family of the commanding officer, and afterwards as regimental schoolmaster. He was with the regiment in Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto.
In the latter city he closed his engagement with the army, and devoted himself to teaching a private school. Not satisfied, however, with his vocation as a teacher, and longing to become an active pastor, he gave up his school, and was ordained in 1834 as pastor of the Church in Chinguacousy, Canada. He remained there about a year, and in 1835 he was called to Lockport, N. Y., where he had a successful ministry of four years. Subsequently he was called to fill important pulpits in Roxbury, Mass., in what is now the Dudley Street Church, in the First, Baptist Church, Charlestown, and in the Baldwin Place Church, Boston, :Nineteen years were spent in New England in these three churches, and two or three years in the employ of the Northern Baptist Education Society. While acting as pastor of the Baldwin Place Church, in Boston, he was visited with a severe illness, which compelled him to resign his pastorate. He was indisposed for a year, a part of which he spent in Europe. On returning to America he took charge, for a time, of a new church which had been formed at Williamsburg, N.Y.. He was also, for a time, pastor of the Lee Avenue Church, Brooklyn. In 1860 he removed to Toronto, and became pastor of the Bond Street Baptist Church, where his ministry was eminently successful. During the entire period of his service as a preacher of the gospel, which was of some thirty-five years' duration, it is estimated that he baptized upward of a thousand persons. His death, which was almost instantaneous, took place July 9, 1869. See Memorial Sermon, by Rev. William Stewart. (J. C. S.)
