Several Branches Short of a Full Tree

A Genealogy & Family Tree Blog

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Garrison Smith Welch

Whether you descend from one of these surnames or are just interested in genealogical adventures and stories of discovery, welcome!

Eleventh Hour Wife

While scouring records for clues on Ancestry.com, I stumbled upon a document containing a familiar name: Martin C. Welch in Lucas County, Ohio. Lucas County claimed scads of Welches, as did Ottawa County next door. Many of these Welches descended from my 4x great-grandfather named Martin C. Welch. But something about this newly found record didn’t make sense: it declared the marriage of one Martin C. Welch to Dorothy Wiesters.

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Divination with Bricks

Who was hiding behind this brick wall—the one behind my maternal 3rd great-grandmother? At first, she herself only peeked from behind that wall... all I knew was her name, which came from an unsourced report by my late great uncle, who tracked his ancestry in the 1970s before the Internet.

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Fall Colors on the Perry Tree

FAMILY LEGEND TELLS of one of our ancestors, who marched with General Grant in the Civil War. To be more exact, he rode with him... as General Grant's flag bearer (color bearer). Apparently, being a Civil War color bearer was "the toughest job you'll ever love, but it will probably get you killed. Carrying a regiment's colors into battle was considered an honor and a privilege. It was also a very dangerous job and would likely get a man maimed or killed. Thus, it required a great deal of courage" (Civil War Sources Blog). Soldiers would look to the flag to maintain their position and to keep from being separated from their regiment. My uncle told me...

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Lucky Charms

TWO MYSTERIOUS INSCRIPTIONS, believed to have been penned by Garrison Smith Welch (my 3x great grandfather), were found in a family Bible. The Bible sat in the home of one of Garrison’s great-grandsons—an 80-year-old farmer in Union County, Ohio (Robert E. Welch, d. 2010). When I first talked with him on the phone, he was surprised to learn that our Welches were believed to be of Irish descent, rather than German. Garrison’s father was Martin C. Welch, and according to the 1880 US Census, Martin’s father was born in Ireland. Old farmer Bob had figured they were German, because the inscriptions were written in some form of German. One of them was even signed...

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Ready. Amos. Fired! • PART 2

WHEN RESEARCHING MY GENEALOGY, I wonder if some coincidences—if not all—should be examined closer. In PART 1, I explained that I thought it merely coincidental that the name, Amos York, had belonged to another person, unrelated to my family. Here is my email to the volunteer photographer (on FindAGrave.com) of that grave marker...

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