Henry Gordon Caldwell, the second child of F.M. and Oma, married Melinda Mariar (or Mariah or Marar - we are uncertain about the spelling since she never signed her name) Selvedge on February 8, 1903. The 1900 census shows the Selvedges and the Caldwells living next door to one another. It looks as though Melinda Mariar married "the boy next door. "They had nine children, seven of which lived to adulthood.
 

Henry Gordon lived near Pearson (Cadron and/or Piney townships), AR from 1900 (being joined there by his new wife Oma in 1903) until about 1913 or 1914. The 1910 census shows Melinda and Henry Gordon married and having three children. Melinda, called "Linnie," was a very industrious lady that raised a big family, always raised a big garden, and always set a big table. Linnie never had a formal education. She was never able to read, write, or sign her name (she would make an "X" for her signature). However, she was far from ignorant. She had an intelligent mind and a strong memory. When she and her family were picking cotton in the field, they would weigh the sacks of cotton as they were filled. Her daughters  would write down the amount so that they would have a record of it. At the end of the day, Linnie was able to give her daughters an accurate total because she had kept up with it in her head.

Since she couldn't read or write she never followed a written recipe. All of her recipes she kept in her head. She and her family never wore store-bought clothes. She made all of their clothes herself; yet she and her family were as neat and well dressed as anyone else. She also prepared the children's lunch for school. The children always walked to school until Lucille hurt her knee. At that time only Lucille, Bud, Elbert, and Bill were still in school. After Lucille hurt her knee, they would ride double on two horses to get to school. Bud would take care of the horses when they got to school, putting them in the shed there.

There were two business men a few miles away in Rose Bud, the Robbins brothers, who had a general mercantile store and cotton gin. Even though they had good, dry cord wood (cord wood is fire wood cut to proper length and placed in stacks, 1 cord being a stack 4 feet high by 4 feet wide by 8 feet long or 128 cubic feet) to fire the boiler with, they were having trouble keeping up enough steam to keep the cotton gin running. They would gin a few bales of cotton, quit, wait for enough steam to build up, gin a few bales, quit, wait for enough steam to build up, and so on. Mr. Elbert Robbins, the brother in charge of the gin, heard there was a young man over at Pearson (our Henry) who was firing a boiler for a saw mill with the green wood slabs that were coming off the logs but was, none-the-less keeping up enough steam for the saw mill to run. He sent for Henry Gordon to come over and work for a week to see if he could keep the steam up enough to keep the gin running. When the end of the week came and the cotton gin had not had to shut down all week, Mr. Robbins asked when Henry Gordon could move to Rose Bud to work for him. Henry Gordon replied, "I don't know. Hadn't anything been said about how much I'd be paid or what I'd do when the gin wasn't running." Eventually they struck a deal. The Caldwell family moved to Rose Bud and Henry Gordon worked for the Robbins brothers for many years. Later Henry Gordon bought a farm south of Rose Bud from a doctor and his wife who lived in Rose Bud. He farmed there for several years.

In the spring of 1930, both the doctor and his wife died two weeks apart. Due to a flaw in the sales contract for the farm, the executor of the doctors estate, who was also his son-in-law, was able to take the farm away from Henry Gordon, even though he was not behind in his payments. A neighbor, Mr. Ed Adkisson, told him he would just loan Henry the money and he could just pay the place off. The executor of the estate would not accept the payment. When they went to court, Mr. Ed Adkisson waved the $900 balance due on the place in the judges face and accused the judge of being bought off, but to no avail. The judge sat there and shook his head and threatened to cite Mr. Adkisson with contempt of court. Henry Gordon and his family were given two weeks to move. On the day they moved, many wagons and teams showed up to help them move - and indication of how well thought of the Caldwells were and of the raw deal they felt he had received.

Henry Gordon was known for his good, stout work horses. He knew how to train them to do a lot of work. For several years, he hauled freight from Searcy to Rose Bud, as well as many other places. It was not uncommon for him to hire out his teams and himself to do road work and move special, extra-heavy loads, such as boilers or flues for boilers. Henry Gordon always planned so that he had plenty of corn in the crib for his horses, pork in the smoke house, sorghum molasses in the sorghum barrel, and vegetables out of the garden to keep a large family growing and going.