James Parks Caldwell

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James Parks Caldwell, March 27, 1841-April 5, 1912 born in Monroe, Ohio, was just 14 years old when he helped launch the Sigma Chi Fraternity. By the time he was 13, his progress through academic courses, including Latin and advanced math, caused the principal of the local academy to remark that the boy had covered everything that could be offered there, and he entered Miami University apparently with advanced credits. According to fellow founder Benjamin Piatt Runkle,

“Jimmie Caldwell was born with a wonderful brain and a strangely sensitive and delicate organization. He was from his childhood one of the most lovable of God's creations. ...His contributions, essays, poems, plays and stories read in the literary hall, in the chapter meetings and on Saturdays before the whole corps of students, were the most remarkable productions that I ever heard. Few of us escaped the pointed witticisms that flowed from his pen, or ever lost the nicknames that he gave us in his dramas....”

He graduated Miami University soon after his sixteenth birthday. Following college he practiced law in Ohio, and began a career as an educator in Mississippi. He enlisted in the Confederate army, and during the American Civil War, he was captured and taken prisoner. He rejected an offer of freedom on condition that he renounce allegiance to the Confederacy, even though it came from a Union soldier who "loved him as a brother".

Following the war, he returned to Mississippi and was admitted to the bar. He remained a bachelor and traveled frequently, writing as a journalist and practicing law. His death came in 1912, at Biloxi, where in his room were found the latest issues of The Sigma Chi Quarterly (now known as The Magazine of Sigma Chi). He is buried in Biloxi Cemetery.

[edit] Sources

Information on Founders from the Sigma Chi website