William Welch Family
photos and family information furnished by Elizabeth (Cathey) Maxson, great granddaughter of William and Louise (Bradshaw) WelchWilliam Welch
From Family Tragedy to Life in Texas
William Welch lived all of his early life, from 1858 to 1900, in the Hazel Creek area of western North Carolina. He married Louise Elizabeth Bradshaw and had a wonderful family he loved and enjoyed very much.
In 1898 a terrible tragedy occurred when typhoid fever swept through the Hazel Creek area and Louise, his wife, and 4 of their children, all succumbed to the disease within a few months of each other. William became depressed and withdrawn after losing so much of his family and often sat and just stared into the distance. His youngest daughter, Vida, would climb into his lap and talk to him. She would demand attention and, if she didn't think he was listening to her, she would grab his nose and pull his head down to make him listen. This would tickle him and he would become more like his "old self".
Two years after the family deaths, William took the 4 remaining children, his daughters Nora, Ellen, Olive and Vida, and moved to Georgia. While in Georgia, he married again to Rachel Proctor who was the widow of one of his cousins. Then they moved to Grand Prairie, Texas, in 1901. William later divorced his 2nd wife and moved to Haskell, Texas, in 1907.
Here, in Haskell, he lived until his death - sometimes in a house of his own and sometimes with one of his daughters who also lived in the county, Nora or Olive. At one time he partnered with another man in running a service station. Vida also lived in Haskell County. Ellen married Joe Reed and lived in Grand Prairie, Texas. William was living with Nora when he passed away in 1941.
Father, as he was called, told wonderful stories and wrote interesting letters to his daughters and grandchildren. Olive's daughter, Beryl Montgomery Cathey, said he should have been a writer because he could make the stories so interesting.
He wrote a description of the Hazel Creek area of North Carolina, an area he loved, as follows:
Hazel Creek
"Blind Homer sang of Trojan wars and heroes, Horace of Love, Dante of Infernal regions, Melton of Paradise. Now if I had the genius of all those old Masters combined, a harp with a thousand strings and all the earth for an audience, I would sing with all my heart and soul about Old Hazel Creek. I would proclaim all her beauties and rugged grandeurs to the remotest generations. If I were a sculptor and had the power to chisel my thoughts on marble, I would search all the quarries of the earth for the purest white stone and somewhere in an enchanted land, where the skies are the bluest, the water the purest, the birds sing the sweetest far into the soft mellow moonlight night, I would begin a work of love and duty.
"I would bid the cold marble to speak for me as I plied the chisel to its side until the surface took the shape I wished and at last Old Hazel Creek stood revealed in all her beauty, ready to give of her pure cold water of her many springs to bless the drinker with joy and health. I would make a base on which the spirit of my dreams would stand, and around its rim I would carve the figures of many dear faces, with their hands raised to beckon all humanity to come see. For of all the streams, she is the purest."
Gravestone of William Welch at Highland Cemetery in Stamford
Nora Welch Deisman Dunn
Vida Welch Gordon and her husband, Clyde
Olive Welch Montgomery