Here are some additional facts regarding my great-grandfather Charlie Welch’s father Benjamin F. Welch and his family.   I now understand why Charlie’s father Benjamin was in Bellingham, Whatcom County, Washington when he died April 5, 1906.

SOURCE: The birth of Sterling, Washington territory, Chapter 1, Jesse Beriah Ball & his daughter, Emma By Noel V. Bourasaw, Skagit River Journal of History & Folklore, ©2005 found at http://www.stumpranchonline.com/skagitjournal/S-WArea/Sterling01-BirthBall1.html

Charlie’s Uncle Albion Welch and three children at the Fairview Store, Nooksack

Albion Welch’s family from Maine
Albion Forest Welch was born in Augusta, Kennebec County, Maine, in 1849. So, at age 30, he was apparently ready to settle down. His father, Philip Hubbard Welch, was bitten by the gold bug and lit out for California around the time of Albion’s birth and his son didn’t see him for twenty years. Philip Sr. took his oldest son with him out west, Philip Jr., age 12. They braved a five-month trip around Cape

Albion Welch, probably circa their Nooksack residence, courtesy of June Hendy, a Welch descendant

Horn that would make most experienced sailors think twice about their profession. We know the details of the trip to Eldorado because one of the younger boys, Albion’s older brother Charles Edwin Welch, told the story to the authors of an 1890 volume called A History of Stanislaus County in California. Father and son proceeded up the Sacramento river to Columbia in Tuolumne County, where he $15,000 in a short period, but he made the mistake of deposited his new-found fortune with Adams & Co., a firm that soon failed; they lost most of their gain. This information was discovered by Robert E Williams, a descendant of one of Albion’s brothers, George Washington Welch.
Back home in Maine, Philip’s wife, Delia Lee Welch, was coping with three small boys, all under age ten, in Portland, Maine, where the winters make ours look like balmy Hawaii. She had seven children by Philip but two girls died as infants. Philip wrote back to Delia to sell their property and bring the children out to join him but she could not raise enough for the journey. Charles explains that for the next five years he gave his mother “no peace until she consented to let me go in advance to my father.” At age 14 he chose to board a ship in 1854 that would sail west to the Isthmus of Panama, where the jungle was being cleared for the railroad that would cross the narrow strip of land the next year. He road a frisky young colt for the final 12 miles lying between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific ocean, assisted by a native woman who guided him so that he reached a hotel on the western terminus before the rest of his party. The argonauts all boarded the steamer Uncle Sam the next morning and arrived in San Francisco on Dec. 9, just 23 days out of New York. After slogging through the mud for several days, he joined his father and brother at Sonora. Eager to make a strike, he worked on a hydraulic gold operation at Stevens Bar near Tuolumne. Over the next few years he worked as a vaquero and farmed in California and raised a family there.
Susan Shoemaker explains what happened to Delia back home:

Sometime between 1854 and 1860 Delia took her remaining children to their uncle Bray Welch in Athens, Maine. She may have been terminally ill because she appears to have died in 1861 at age 50. Two of these boys, Albion Forest Welch and George Washington Welch are in the 1860 census in Bray’s household. George Washington Welch joined the Union Army [in the Civil War] and wound up out here three decades later. Another son, Benjamin Franklin Welch, was a deserter in that war and never came here, as far as we know.

(Albion Welch and family at Nooksack)
Albion Welch and three children at the Fairview Store, Nooksack
Delia may have been terminally ill because she appears to have died in 1861 at age 50. George and Benjamin’s service is not the family’s only connection with the Civil War. According to family tales, Delia Lee Welch was either a cousin, niece or sister of Robert E. Lee, but the descendants are still searching for the exact connection. Family oral tradition indicates that she was banished from the family for marrying Philip. If they suspected him of being a poor provider, they were certainly right. After Albion finished an undetermined amount of school, he logged in Maine and Pennsylvania and then followed his father in 1870, meeting up with him in Stanislaus county, California, where Charles lived on a homestead with his family. Two years later, in the autumn of 1872, Albion moved to Whatcom county, which still included future Skagit county as its southern half. We do not know when he went to work for Jesse Ball.
According to the 1880 Whatcom county census for the Sterling area, Albion and Emma were living in an adjacent dwelling to Jesse’s. Although giving birth and caring for her many children took much of her time, she was often at the counter of her father’s store near the steamboat landing. Judging from the 1972 Jordan article, she enjoyed that immensely. A keen observer, Emma noted the news of the early day. For instance, she remembered that the first team of horses she saw after she came belonged to a Mr. Roach at Hamilton. They were dapple-greys and came through on a sternwheeler about the first of December, 1880. From there they were led up over a crude trail through the forests north of the river and the wagon was taken apart and carried up by some means that she did not explain. She listed the sternwheelers that came upriver during her time there, including the Fanny Lake, Josephine, Chehalis and the Fanny Lake, which burned at the water’s edge between old Sterling and Dead Man’s Riffle near future Sedro.
She also closely observed the Indians living in the area. At one time, she saw a number of Indians teaching small boys to swim. They stood in circle of shallow water and threw boy into the center time after time until the youngsters finally learned. She was fascinated with how the Indian women cooked meat in cedar root baskets woven so tightly they would hold water. They heated rocks in a campfire and then dropped the hot rocks into a stew, which they boiled vigorously. After the boiling stopped the first rock was fished out with sticks and they tossed another hot rock in, repeating those motions until the stew was cooked. She also noted that they barbecued, a skill that was taught to early settlers in the area. She noted with amazement that on one cold winter day in when snow was on the ground, an Indian family came into her father’s store and one small boy was wearing nothing but a shirt much too large, almost to his knees. Emma noted that his feet were bare despite the cold and that instead of buying clothes or shoes, the Indian father bought his son a huge cap that flapped over his ears. “The boy walked out of the store proud as peacock, munching on hardtack,” Emma remembered.

Albion and Emma move the family to Nooksack
(Emma) (Albion)
Emma and Albion Welch, probably circa their Nooksack residence, courtesy of June Hendy, a Welch descendant
Emma gave birth to her fourth child, Paul Russel Welch, on April 2, 1885, in Sterling, and her fifth child, Jesse Beriah Welch, was born on Nov. 16, 1886, in Nooksack, Whatcom county, twelve miles northeast of present Bellingham. That was a town near its namesake river in Whatcom county that was platted on Sept. 16, 1885, by W.R. Moultray, near the famous spot on the Nooksack river that was known to very old timers as “The Crossing.” So we know that she and Albion moved sometime between those dates. This coincides with the time that Skagit Railway & Lumber Co. bought the store and timberland at Sterling. Jesse was very generous to the couple when they claimed their homestead near the town of Nooksack, which was platted on Sept. 16, 1885, by W.R. Moultray, near the famous spot on the Nooksack river that was known to very old timers as The Crossing. The house they built on their homestead also doubled as a store that they called the Fairview. Their first eight years there were apparently prosperous and the homestead is described as being beautiful and growing by leaps and bounds. They would eventually have seven more children there for a total of 11.
Albion seems to have been a generous sort, too, as he sold part of his homestead for the community cemetery on Breckinridge road. We discovered that information from James Berg, who researches history of Whatcom county. His great-grandfather and other settlers bought the cemetery site from the Welches on Dec. 24, 1886. James has not yet found references to Fairview, but he notes that the Welch home was the first school house before a new school was built around 1890. The photo of Albion with his children is on the porch of that combination store/home. While prosperous times still reigned, Albion’s ranch became a magnet as the far-flung Welch family reunited. Sometime in the early 1890s, Albion’s older brother, George Washington Welch, joined them. He and his wife had twelve children while moving across country, and lived most recently in Kansas for about 15 years. Albion’s cousin, Lafayette Welch, the son of Al’s guardian, Uncle Bray, also came. By 1880, wandering Philip Welch Sr. also joined them at Nooksack, and seems to have enjoyed his grandfather role to the many children. He died there in 1888 at age 76. All those relatives are buried in the family plot.
(Ida and John McRae)
Ida and husband John McRae
Then, after the eighth year, the roof fell in. Like the Sedro-Sterling area, Whatcom county was booming with railroad investment in the time from 1888-1891. Albion heard the talk that Great Northern would soon choose Fairhaven (now south Bellingham, the town that was then called Whatcom) as the western terminus for its transcontinental railroad line. He decided to mortgage his home and land to buy more real estate in the path of the railway roadbed. In 1893, the Northwest discovered that James J. Hill of Great Northern had been playing everyone for suckers except for the city fathers of Seattle, who had the upper terminus hand all the time. Investors such as Albion were hit by a double whammy when the Financial Panic of 1893 hit at the same time. One after another, prosperous ranchers throughout the Northwest lost their land as their bank loans were foreclosed.

Albion moves the family to British Columbia
By 1895-96, Albion lost his homestead and investment property and the future was looking bleak. One of Emma’s younger sons was named Philip Hubbard Welch for his grandfather. In an undated letter, he described how Albion got caught in the investment boom and bust: “. . . in April 1896 he moved his family, a team of horses, some 9 or 10 cows and a pig or two and homesteaded in B.C. and there they lived until his death.” Ida would have been 16 then, so her coming-out years must have been brutal, but she married John Malcolm McRae in 1898 in Abbotsford, B.C.
Albion and family lived in or near the little town of Peardonville for the next four decades until both parents died. According to descendant June Hendy and her husband, Robert, that town stood where the where the where the Abbotsford airport is now located. Richard Peardon settled the town in the early 1890s and the Welch children attended the school there after it was built in 1896. Meanwhile, Ida and John lived nearby, moving around a lot because of his work with the railroad. They sadly lost their son Archie during World War I. Ball descendants Susan Shoemaker and Sharon Calabrese-Winterburn are daughters of Florence Mona McRae Casey, a talented artist in her own right, much like her grandmother Emma. She is now 92 and attended the Founders Day program two years ago that honored William Holtcamp’s family and Sterling. Susan sent us this memory of Archie from her mother::

Archie was Florence’s big brother. He was born on November 30, 1900 and died on April 14. 1918. Ida and John McRae’s son Archie ran away and joined the US army before the family moved back to Whatcom County because he had not succeeded in enlisting in Canada. When they found out that he was underage they shipped him home and he became ill with Swine Flu and died of pneumonia on the boat. His body was shipped to the home of one George Washington Welch’s (Albion’s brother) daughters in Nooksack. The body was put in the parlor, and Florence who was five, was made to go say farewell. She says that the Swine Flu turned him black and she was certain that this was not her beloved brother and that someone had played a dirty trick. She never got over it. In order to collect money from the US government because of Archie’s death while enlisted, the family immigrated back to the US on October 15, 1918.

Ida and John eventually divorced after having nine children. She married again in 1931 to Eli Galarneau. The couple moved together to Oroville, California, where she died in 1938 after suffering severe arthritis. Ida is buried in Oroville in a separate cemetery near her grandmother, Henrietta Ball. Emma died in Abbottsford, B.C., in 1940 and upriver Skagit pioneers showed their respect for this fine woman. According to her obituary, four of her peers from Sedro-Woolley attended the funeral : Susie Osterman Alverson, Mrs. Kate Bovey Shrewsbury, Mrs. Eva Van Fleet Beebe and Mrs. Ethel Van Fleet Harris. Emma and Albion are buried together at the Hazelwood Cemetery in Abbotsford, BC.

Emma Ball Welch. We thought at first that this was her wedding dress but Emma’s descendant June Hendy checked the back of the photo and discovered that it is not. Emma signed the photo at age 15.