I have spent so much time in trying to find my father’s parents and grandparents without any success that I had become disappointed.
JoRetta Lewis, a granddaughter of my father’s older step-brother, John Byrd Welch, hunted for several years without success, and until her death.
It was through my son-in-law’s efforts that Clay Brown and I unlocked the key to find some of what we knew and to finally find other information we first suspected but were unable to verify. Finally, we made a “leap of genealogical faith” and to our surprise, found the great, great-grandfather, Joseph Welch (1771 to 1841).
This allowed us to line up the missing grandfathers with a consistent match of all the members of our known genealogical ascents from Charles Ibzan to Thomas H. to the two unknown grandfathers, Charles McK. and Joseph Welch.
What was surprising to me was when I had my DNA tested, one of the people who was listed as a relative of mine was Joseph Welch of 1771-1841. If I had, had my DNA tested earlier, it would have been much easier to follow the descent back to my known grandfather, Charles Ibzan Welch, and not to have spent so much time hunting forward..
Charles Ibzan Welch was the son of Thomas H. Welch and Amanda Middlebrooks. It was difficult to go back further because of the fact that so little was known of Thomas H. and Amanda Welch’s demise.
It is now known that Thomas H. left the care of their three children, Charles Ibzan, Sarah Jane and Harriett Calestine Welch to their grandmother, Jane Crawford, before Thomas H. disappeared in about 1857. It was known that he was alive around that time as he was suing to collect on a wagon he had built but for which he had not been paid. It is believed that Amanda Middlebrooks Welch died in child-birth with Harriett Calestine.
We now know that Thomas H. Welch was the son of Charles McK Welch (1802 -1854) who was born in North Carolina and died in Robertson County, Texas. His wife, Mary Anthony/Atkins was born in 1809 and died in 1854 and they were the parents of Thomas H. and four other children.
Charles McK Welch was the son of Joseph Welch (1771 – 1841) and married Lydia (Unknown) Welch (1782 – 1854) and they were the parents of Charles McK and four other children.
One of his sons was Joseph “Joe” Welch (1828 – 1880) When Joseph “Joe” Welch was born in 1828 in Franklin, Missouri, his father, Charles, was 26 and his mother, Mary, was 20. He married Elizabeth “Eliza” Capps/Cobbs and they had seven children together. He also had two sons with Eliza C. Tipps. He died in 1880 in Texas at the age of 52. This I have learned from my DNA test as it shows that we are kin to each other.
In my research, it was difficult to trace my mother’s father, John Hilmer Johnson, because he came to the United States from Sweden in about 1890 at the age of seventeen. No one ever thought about getting his genealogical information, other than the fact he was from the city of Göteborg, was sponsored by the Knappe family (whoever they were) and left very limited data on his family in Sweden. I can only hope that some of them may someday have their DNA tested and we could connect with them.
In my search on Ancestry.com, I have traced by mother’s side of the family back quite far. Her grandmother was Charity Rose and I have found the Rose family goes back to John Rose in 1535 and is my 10th great-grandfather.
Charity’s husband, John White was traced back to John Whyt (White) in 1325 and is my 17th great-grandfather. I think that someone must have had a lot of time on their hands to spend so much of it on their research. I would rather live in the last 85 years of my life and not the far past from which I came.
I have found it more fun to research my family members and to link to other family members in the two cemeteries where most of our family members are buried. These are the Ebony Cemetery in Mills County, which is about half way between Brownwood and Goldthwaite, where my father and his family grew up and where most of his family members, as well as a number of the Welches are buried. The other cemetery is the Greenleaf Cemetery in Brownwood where most of my mother’s family members are interred.
Because of my age, I no longer search for relatives, as my DNA shows more relatives than I care to communicate with. It has been an interesting hobby but what I have enjoyed the most were the ancestors who left a story for me to get to better know them and to be able to understand their lives during their journey on earth..