I want to mention some of the events that have occurred in my life and how the genealogy research has helped me to put these functions into the better understanding of myself.
First, I want you to know why I felt it to be necessary to journey back in time to reacquaint myself with occurrences that I did not think much of while they were happening, but seem more important now. The great theologian, Kierkegaard, said “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” At last, and after 85 years of living life forward, I am now attempting to remember and understand it backwards.
I feel very much like Dorothy and her friends on the path to Oz to see the Great Wizard to find answers and obtain their hearts’ desires. I know that I have had the wisdom for good judgment, a big heart for the necessary courage and the bravado but I don’t believe that I have always known when to use my talents at the most appropriate time.
I have never felt that I was searching for someone to open the curtain and help me to find these assets but, rather, have believed that these qualities lay hidden within me and it was up to me to discover them. My reason for writing this short story of my life is an attempt for introspection, examination or observation of my own mental and emotional actions or processes which have aided me in coming to accept myself with satisfaction. The many things I have accomplished and forgiving myself for the many mistakes I have made along the way when my reach exceeded my grasp.
I cannot start talking about my life without first setting the stage by mentioning a number of things that happened along the way which affected my parent’s upbringing and, eventually, was passed on to me and my siblings. These things set into motion events and happenings which altered my parent’s thinking and helped to evolve them into the adults they became.
I was a creation of their deep-seated belief systems, manners and convictions as heredity has a way of affecting us to the second and third generation. I do not say this in a negative way as I sincerely believe that even though my parents lacked a lot of formal education or “book learning”, they had formed significant and notable beliefs and mores which served them well. They attempted to pass on to their children a code of social conduct and an ideology which gave us a reasonably confident and positive outlook on life.
My father’s father, Charles Ibzan Welch, had died in 1899 when my father was only four years old. My dad’s older half-brother, John Byrd Welch, helped his step mother and my grandmother, Cordelia Welch, care for the eight members of the family as my dad grew up. Later, my father and mother cared for his mother, Cordelia Elizabeth Welch, for the last 28 years of her life.
This was a common practice in those days, since there were no facilities to care for the aged, nor money to pay for their care if the facilities had been available. This placed an extra burden on my mother but I never heard her complain about the inconvenience of this while caring for her own seven living children.
The oldest child in our family was stillborn and the next to oldest, Helen, died of blood poisoning (septicemia) at seven years of age. Both of my parents were devastated by this catastrophic loss and it took many years and a number of other children for them to accept the passing of their second and most precocious child. My Dad, Dewitt Welch, was the Post Master of the Ebony, Texas post office after he bought the store in Ebony and he worked at it for two years.
Both of my parents had a great affection for the Ebony Community, a small town between Brownwood and Goldthwaite, and we children heard them speak of it often. We did not comprehend just how much it had affected their thinking until we started attending the yearly meetings of the Ebony Cemetery Association and realized just how many of our family members, relatives and friends they had that were buried there.
My father had been married when he was only twenty years old, but the short marriage did not work out. His first wife, Nena Lois, during a disagreement, “threw acid in his face”, according to my mother. Mother did not say what kind of acid it was but I assume it wasn’t stronger than vinegar and that it was his ego which was more wounded than his physical being. His age of 20 and Nena’s age of 15 probably shows they were too immature to have made a commitment for life as was expected at this time.
Because of his loss of face (no pun intended) and realizing that their reactions were not the basis for a good marriage, my father took a team of horses and drove to Port Arthur. He lived with his older sister, Armour and her husband, William Joshua “Black Josh” Philen and their two children, Lucille and Alton for a few months before entering the Army and World War I.
Dad and Mom never mentioned this marriage to me or any of my brothers and sisters, except for my younger sister, Dorothy before she married Bill Kite, as Bill had been married before. I guess that she was trying to let Dorothy know that in any marriage, your partner may be carrying a load of baggage or secrets which you will have to learn to accept. This was probably because Mother had done so herself. Mother also shared this previous marriage of Dad with Ann but she never spoke of it to the rest of the kids.
For the others of us, Dad carried this secret to his grave – like we would have thought less of him! Before her death, my older brother, Norvel, and I had the opportunity to face my mother on why they had never mentioned this to the two of us. She said that she felt like it had been up to Dad to tell us.
I think that this demonstrated to us just how so many families, in earlier days, often thought that they were doing the right thing by hiding secrets which would have been of interest, but of no great concern for all the children to have known as it would have helped us to have known our parents better than we did. I think that families in earlier times had more shame about past mistakes they may have felt they made and that no one would ever know but them if they never talked about it.