Memorials › Jonas Welch

Jonas Welch

22 Aug 1841 – 17 Sep 1911

Birth	22 Aug 1841
Death	17 Sep 1911
Cemetery	Columbus Cemetery Columbus , Platte County , Nebraska , USA
Added by	Debra Jahn on 31 Aug 2019
FaG	https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/20160358

Bio

From the web site: http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ne/topic/resources/OLLibrary/PlatHist/Vol_II/ppp2p344.html High encomiums have been passed upon Jonas Welch, all of which have been well deserved, for his life was ever upright and honorable, actuated by high principles and worthy motives. He had, moreover, the qualities of consideration, kindliness and generosity and the nobility of his character endeared him to all with whom he came in contact. Of him his friends might well say: "This was a man. Take him for all in all I shall not look upon his like again." From pioneer times he resided in Nebraska and his contribution to the development of the state was a valuable one. A native of England, he was born in Dorsetshire on the 22d of August, 1841, and was the eldest son in a family of seven children. His father, Moses Welch, who was born in Dorsetshire in 1815, was a blacksmith in moderate circumstances. He wedded Harriet Rawlings, who was born in the same locality in 1818, and both were descended from old English families. The parents came to the new world in 1847, landing at New Orleans after a voyage which consumed eight weeks and three days. From the Crescent City they proceeded northward to St. Louis and two years later became residents of Alton, Illinois, where they resided for four years, when they took up their abode upon a farm near Brighton, Illinois. During that period Jonas Welch was a pupil in the public schools near his father's home. He was a youth of sixteen when in March, 1857, the family came to Nebraska, driving across the country with three yoke of oxen and reaching Florence on the 24th of April. Thence they proceeded to Genoa, in what was then Platte but is now Nance county, reaching their destination on the 19th of May, 1857. They cast in their lot with the pioneer settlers, being among the first white people of the county. For two years thereafter Jonas Welch was employed by the settlers at breaking prairie and for a year was a farm hand at the Pawnee Indian agency. In 1860 he joined a party that went to Colorado, attracted by the discovery of gold, but the same year he returned and again entered the government service at Genoa, working for four years in the blacksmith shop and for four years as government miller. In 1869 he resigned his position and joined J. P. Becker in building and operating a water mill on Shell creek, in Colfax county, under the firm style of Becker & Welch. This was the pioneer grist mill of central Nebraska and its patrons came from many miles around, the business being continued until 1886. At the same time Mr. Welch owned and cultivated a farm of three hundred and twenty acres, whereon he engaged extensively in feeding cattle and hogs. After selling the mill he removed to Columbus, where he was connected with the grain and coal trade for six years, and from 1892 until his demise his attention was confined to banking and to the management of his farm properties. He was one of the first directors of the Commercial National Bank and remained an officer therein until his health failed. On the 25th of December, 1862, Mr. Welch was united in marriage to Miss Margaret Shackelton, also a native of England. They became the parents of nine children, as follows: Theresa Ellen, who is the wife of William S. Fox, of Council Bluffs, Iowa; William J., a resident of Genoa, Nebraska; Henrietta, who gave her hand in marriage to Harry Newman, of Columbus, Nebraska; Caroline, the wife of George W. Galley, of Columbus, Nebraska; Martha A., the widow of M. H. Watts; Charles A., living in Columbus; Robert M., who is deceased; and two who died in infancy. The family circle was again broken by the hand of death when on the 17th of September, 1911, Mr. Welch passed away. He was a devoted member of the Masonic fraternity, belonging to Lebanon Lodge, and when death called him his brethren of that organization laid him to rest with all the honors of the craft. Of his political views one of the local papers said: "In politics Mr. Welch was as devoted to the principles in which he believed as is the mother to the child. He was in a sense an intense partisan, and he regarded his duty to the democratic party as he regarded duty to his church or to his family. He was often honored by his party, holding membership on the county legislative board, serving often as chairman of his county committee, and in 1900 representing his congressional district as delegate to the national democratic convention. However, partisan as he was, he had the courage to hold his duty to his state higher than duty to party, and when his party named for high office a man whom he regarded as unworthy, such a man could not hope to win the vote or influence of Jonas Welch." The Rev. S. D. Harkness, of the Presbyterian church, in the funeral service said: "The passing of Jonas Welch to that 'undiscovered country from whose journey no traveler returns' brings to my mind some of his own recitals of important incidents in his career. As a boy he saw and heard the great Lincoln and the mighty Douglas in that series of debates which shook the nation to its foundations. He was there at Freeport on that memorable day when Lincoln set the battle lines in array with that famous declaration: 'A house divided against itself cannot stand; this union cannot endure half slave and half free.' That boy traveled all the distance between Illinois and Nebraska by ox-team, and in order that the young people present may better appreciate the wonderful changes which have taken place in our own Nebraska since those days, I cite the fact that in all the journey from Omaha to Columbus the ox-cart caravan passed but five civilized human habitations. The trail he followed then was marked by the bleaching bones of the 'forty-niners.' Today the great Overland trains thunder over that same trail. He plodded the ox-team way to Denver, and found a straggling mining camp where now rises the gem city of the Rocky mountains. He played well his part with the pioneers in the upbuilding of this young state. He was of a generation which saw states born, and lived to see steam railroads upon the ox-trails, to see habitations of comfort and luxury reared upon the sites where stood the tepees of the Aborigines. Within the life-span of that boy, whose walk was clean, whose manhood was strong, whose age was honored, and to whose memory we now pay tribute without reserve, were gathered and combined such marks of civilization as the world had not known in all the ages." Many were the words of friendship and regard spoken of Mr. Welch by those with whom he had been associated. One said of him: "If to me might be given the privilege of living one thousand years, and changing my place of abode each year, I could not hope to find in all the thousand changes a man who would exemplify in his life the full measure of a neighbor and a friend more fully than that measure was met by Jonas Welch during the quarter century in which I was blessed by his presence as a neighbor and a friend." Mr. Welch never allowed personal interest or ambition to dwarf his public spirit or activities and he was ever actively interested in plans and measures for the public good. In his career business ability was well balanced with humanitarianism and he could be said to be a most successful man when judged by this standard: "The measure of our success is not the good that comes to us, but the good that comes to the world through us." Such was his kindly nature that he spread around him much of the sunshine of life, for he was cordial, genial and kindly, had the tender sympathy of a woman and also the spirit of strong justice when occasion demanded.

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Margaret Shackelton Welch 1836–1917 FaG

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