Minnie Welch Kelly's Autograph Book

Here is a quick view of my great grandmother's autograph book, which is a glimpse of her journey from Waterbury, Connecticut to Greenwood, Nebraska. It includes scans of each page and my transcription of the document. Minnie Welch Kelly's autograph book - Subscriber Home Pages

Fearless Females - Minnie Welch's autograph book

Lisa Alzo, who writes The Accidental Genealogist blog, has brought back a 31-day series of blogging themes called Fearless Females, in honor of celebrating March as Women's History Month. I hope to participate in as many of these blogging prompts as possible this month.

March 8 - Did one of your female ancestors leave a diary, a journal or collection of letters?

A page from Minnie Welch's autograph book

Although not diaries or journals, I have some wonderful paper documents that capture a picture of the everyday life of my ancestors - autograph books. I have autograph books that belonged to my mother, to my father's mother and to my great-grandmother, Minnie Welch Kelly, and her sister, Nellie Welch.

It was the autograph books that belonged to the teenage Welch sisters that contributed to constructing the family group sheets of the Welch family. With entries such as "From your loving brother, Mark Welch" or "Love, Aunt Winnie," I've been able to learn about the family of Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally of Waterbury, Connecticut.

Miss Minnie Welch
of Waterbury, Connecticut

I've scanned all of the pages in Minnie Welch's autograph book and have compiled them into a pdf book that is a work-in-progress. The pages appear as they do in the original book; I only wish I'd begun the transcription a few decades ago before the ink had not deteriorated as much as it has now. I've made an index of the people who signed Minnie's book and even started to do a little bit of research on Ancestry.com about Minnie's friends. What better way to learn more about my great-grandmother than to learn about the friends she associated with as a young woman. This part of the project is still in process.

Minnie's autograph book covers the period from 1883 - 1888, when she was 18 - 23 years of age. The autograph book takes her from her birthplace in Connecticut to the plains of Nebraska in 1888. The last entry in the book is dated January 1888. She married my great-grandfather in Greenwood, Nebraska in December of that year.

The time frame makes me wonder where and how they met. What was their courtship like? How did a young lady from the east fall in love with a hard-working Nebraska farmer whose family had traveled by covered wagon from St. Paul, Minnesota? The answers to those questions may never be known, but what these pages show is that Minnie had a wealth of loving friends and family who undoubtedly contributed to the woman, wife and mother she became.

Surname Saturday - Welch

The Welch Family of Waterbury, Connecticut

Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally of Waterbury, Connecticut were my great-great grandparents. I am descended from their daughter, Mary Janice "Minnie" Welch, who married Daniel Kelly.

Details about this family still remain a bit elusive for me, although a few more details continue to surface from time to time.

It was only this past January that a "cousin" discovered a photograph of Mark and Sarah's grave site at St. Anthony's Cemetery in Litchfield, Connecticut.

Most of the family information that I've been able to put together came from the autograph books of Minnie Welch and her sister, Nellie.

Mark Welch was born in Ireland in 1826. His first wife was named Bridget and they had three daughters: Sarah, Catharine and Jane. After Bridget's death, he married Sarah Conneally and their children were Edward T, Mark Jr, Nellie, Annie, Mary Janice, Marcella, Agnes and William.

Besides my great grandmother, the only other member of the Welch family who I've been able to trace forward was Agnes Welch, who married Clarence Garrigus. My discoveries about this family are included in earlier blog posts.

Ancestry.com indicates the name Welch is an ethnic name for someone of Welsh origin. It also states that the usual spelling used in Ireland is Walsh. Top places of origin of Welch immigrants is Ireland, followed by England, Scotland and Germany.

I suppose that the families I have the most interest in are those who are the most elusive. I am hopeful that one day I'll have a much more comprehensive family biography of my Welch-Conneally ancestors.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Minnie Welch Kelly's autograph book

I've been quite fortunate to have several autograph books from the females in my family be passed along to me. I have the autograph book that belonged to my mother when she was a teenager; the autograph book that belonged to my father's mother; and autograph books that belonged to my great grandmother, Minnie Welch Kelly, and her sister, Nellie Kelly.

Minnie and Nellie's books are probably the ones I treasure the most because of the links they gave me to adding to the family tree. With inscriptions such as "Your Uncle Luke Conneally" or "Your brother, Mark Welch, Jr" and "Aunt Winnie" I was able to begin documenting family group sheets on the Welch family of Waterbury, Connecticut.

Minnie's autograph book begins in Connecticut and ends in Nebraska shortly before she married Daniel Kelly.

I've scanned the pages of Minnie's book and attempted to transcribe the entries the best I could. This is still a work in progress, as I am also attempting to trace some of the non-family members who wrote in Minnie's book.


View Minnie's autograph book here. Please note - this is a large Adobe pdf file and may take some time to complete the download.

You Can't Ignore the In-Laws - a long lost relatives success story!

Every few weeks, I go through the photo album that belonged to my great-grandmother, Mary (Minnie) Welch Kelly, who began her life in Connecticut and moved to Nebraska as a young woman in her twenties. That photo album, along with her autograph book and the autograph book of her sister, Nellie Welch, gave me the first real clues to the relationships in the Welch family.

An earlier post on this blog back in January shared my success in identifying members of the Garrigus family - one of Minnie's other sisters, Agnes Welch, married Clarence Gregory Garrigus and they had two children, Alfred and Ethel.

Just last weekend, I discovered obituaries of Clarence and Agnes in the Hartford (CT) Courant newspaper. I knew that Clarence was an inventor as I had discovered one of his patent applications online. His obituary states, "With his wife, Mrs. Agnes Welch Garrigus, he developed the Universal Breadmixer in 1903. The couple used their kitchen as a laboratory."

The obituary goes on to say, "During the World Fair in St. Louis, Mo., in 1904, he passed out bread samples made from the recipe of his wife, who used the new mixer."

The bells in my head started to go off and I returned to great-grandmother Minnie's photo album once again.


Far right, Agnes Welch Garrigus with her son, Alfred Garrigus, at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904.

I had previously identified Alfred from two other photographs in the album, so this elegant woman with him in the St. Louis photographs has to be his mother, Agnes Welch Garrigus.


Agnes Welch Garrigus and Alfred Garrigus

This photograph identifies the address of where the photograph was taken, but I haven't been able to determine what it says - yet.

This series of photographs in Minnie's album also includes the man who I believe is Clarence Gregory Garrigus.


Dan Kelly gives Clarence Garrigus a ride.

The photo album also includes photographs of the Garrigus family in Nebraska. I am inferring that the Garrigus family visited Agnes' sister, Minnie Welch Kelly, in Nebraska on the same visit to the West when they attended the World's Fair in St. Louis. In the photo above, my great-grandfather, Dan Kelly (Minnie's husband) is having a bit of fun for the camera by giving his brother-in-law, Clarence Garrigus, a ride in the wheelbarrow.

So - after all of these years, I am able to begin identifying the other family members in Minnie's photo album. And this was because I located the obituary of Clarence Garrigus that told about the 1904 trip to the World's Fair in St. Louis.

Follow all of the leads and clues that come your way - and don't ignore the in-laws!

Adding to the Welch Family

The recent discovery of the photograph of the grave marker for Mark Welch and his wife, Sarah Conneally (my great, great grandparents) in Connecticut has put my focus on Connecticut research this past week. And I once again returned to the autograph book that belonged to their daughter, Nellie Welch.

The autograph book includes entries from "Aunt Winnie" of Goshen, CT, "Cousin Annie" of Goshen, CT, and William E Welch of Goshen, CT. A search of the Welch family living in Goshen at this time resulted in several census records for this family. The head of the household is Edward Welch, who would be the brother of Mark Welch.

The children of Edward and Winnifred Welch were: Mary (b. about 1856), William (b. about 1858), Mark (b. about 1860), Richard (b. about 1862), James (b. about 1864), Anna (b. Feb 1866). Edward (b. about 1867) and John (b. about 1869).


1870 Census Record for the family of Edward and Winnifred Welch

So far, the only one of the children I've been able to verify in later census records is Anna, who married Mr. Kirwin and had a son, James Kirwin. Mr. Kirwin died before 1930, as Anna is a widow at the age of 34. Her parents, Edward and Winnifred, are living with Anna and Anna's son, James.

By 1910, Edward Welch has died, and Winnifred is living with Anna and her son.

Are any members of this Welch family your ancestor? If so, I'd love to hear from you and share information on this family and their descendants.

Success Story: When the pieces come together . . .

After receiving the photo of the gravestone of my great great grandparents, Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally, I went back to work on filling in some pieces of the Welch family genealogy. I'd had a great start as I have the autograph books that belonged to my great grandmother, Minnie Welch Kelly and her sister, Nellie Welch. Members of the family signed their entries as cousin, brother, uncle, aunt, etc. This really provided me with the first instance of being able to connect family members together.

Email correspondence amongst my fellow Conneally "cousins" and family history researchers continued to present some more clues to family relationships. We became intriguted with the 1900 census which showed Mark Welch at age 74, widowed and living with (as indexed) Clarence Gawngus, Margartta Gawngus and their child, Alfred C. Gawngus.

Other searches of the Gawngus name showed a possible variation as Gaengus. Again, this produced very little in other records searches. So I began searching based only the first names of the family. This turned out to be successful and I discovered the correct surname for this family was Garrigus.

My next step was to, once again, look through my great grandmother's photograph album that included photos of the family members in Connecticut. There I found the photograph above. The handwriting certainly confirmed the last name of Garrigus and there was Alfred, who was listed as their son in 1900 census.

One of the Conneally "cousins" asked if the family had other children. I had come across a daughter, Ethel, in a later census. Back to the photograph album.



Alfred and Ethel Garrigus

Aha! Written on the photo were the names Alfred and Ethel. The connection to the Welch family was made! From that point, I was able to find several members of the Garrigus family which I have added to my family tree. I am hopeful that I can locate some obituaries and tombstone locations that may lead me to more of the Welch family members.

You just never know what will happen when one thing leads to another.

Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally - my great great grandparents

The graves of Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally in St. Anthony's Cemetery, Litchfield, Connecticut

Never underestimate the power of the internet. Today's email brought this photograph from a "long lost relative" - actually a distant cousin who shares some of the same family lines. Wow! This is the first tangible documentation I have of my great great grandparents. Both were born in Ireland and settled in Connecticut. One of their daughters, Mary/Minnie Welch and her sister traveled to Nebraska as very young women. Minnie married my great grandfather, Dan Kelly, and raised three boys.

Any time I'm able to see my family go back another generation, it's a pretty special day.