William Cauldwell (October 12, 1824 – December 2, 1907) was a 19th-century newspaper publisher of the New York Sunday Mercury.

[1] At age 11, he left home to live with an uncle in St. Martinville, Louisiana, and attended Jefferson College for three years.

He then returned to New York, and after working for two years in a dry-goods store, got a job in the printing business under Samuel Adams.

[2] After Adams was murdered by John C. Colt, Cauldwell went to work at the New York Atlas (a Sunday only newspaper founded in 1838) around 1841, doing typesetting.

[6] Cauldwell and the Mercury are credited as being the first newspaper to regularly cover the sport of baseball as news, starting in 1853 with a report on a game between the Knickerbockers and the Gothams.

[13] In 1858, Cauldwell hired rising star Henrick Chadwick, later dubbed the "father of baseball", to cover the sport for the paper.