Welch Name Study

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Welch one_name_studies

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Tasks 3 Resources 4 Footnotes

Introduction

This is a One Name Study to collect together in one place everything about the surname Welch and its variants. My hope is that other researchers will join this study to help make it a valuable reference point for people studying lines that cross or intersect. If you are interested in this project, please click here to be added to the trusted list for this page, so that you will receive a notification any time anybody edits the page or posts comments here. You can also contact me directly, or ask questions in G2G (just make sure you tag your questions with "Welch").

Specifically, I am seeking to find out whether the Welch name came into use independently in multiple places, or whether it originated in one place and then spread as Welches moved around. (In other words, are all the Welch lines actually related, or are there a bunch of distinct families which happen to share the same name?)

To that end, rather than adding [[Category:Welch Name Study]] to every single profile on WikiTree, what I'd like to try to do is categorise only the oldest known Welch in each family line. To do this, start with any Welch profile, and keep following the links to each father (or mother, in cases where the child took the mother's last name instead of the father's last name) until you either hit a dead end, or else find a father with a different last name. (Presumably, in that case, the "father" would actually be a stepfather, but there may be cases where somebody was born with one name and chose to adopt a different one, and in a case like that, you may just have proven that that Welch family line, at the very least, had an independent origin.) Once you reach the first person in a given Welch family line, add the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template to that person's profile, and that will add a new family line to the Welch Name Study category.

Therefore, if you manage to move a line farther back in time (or, better yet, connect it to another Welch line which goes yet father back), please remove the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template from the previous oldest Welch in that line to the new oldest Welch.

Tasks

If you've put up all of the Welches in your family (or at least all the ones you've found so far), and are looking for something else to do, here are some tasks that you might be willing to help with:

1. Biographies:
   • We need to make sure that each Welch on WikiTree has a narrative biography containing all the genealogically relevant facts about them (birth, marriage, and death at the very least). For information on biographies, see the Biographies help page.
2. Categories:
   • We need to make sure that each Welch on WikiTree has the appropriate categories applied to their profile. For information on categories, see the Categorization help page and the Categorization Project.
3. Coats of Arms:
   • It would be great if we could find (or create) well-rendered, but public domain, images of the various Welch coats of arms listed in Burke's General Armory, to add to the profiles of those people who have the right to bear each of them.
     • Progress: not started
4. Connecting:
   • We need to connect all the Unconnected Welch profiles on WikiTree. (This can count towards the Connectors Challenge if you're feeling competitive.) For information on connecting profiles, see the Connectors Project.
     • Progress: 11,392/12,834 profiles = 88.8%
5. Merging:
   • We need to merge any duplicate profiles for the same person into one profile for that person. For information on merging profiles, see the Merging help page.
6. Sourcing:
   • We need to have sources for all the profiles on WikiTree. Specifically, we need at least one (and preferably more) sources added for all the Unsourced Welch profiles on WikiTree. (This can count towards the Sourcerers Challenge if you're feeling competitive.) For information on sourcing profiles, see the Sources help page and the Sourcerers Project.
     • Progress: 12,423/12,834¹ profiles = 96.8%
7. Welches in the Peerage
   • We need to make sure that all deceased Welches listed on ThePeerage.com have profiles on WikiTree, and are sourced and connected to the main tree.
     • Progress:
       • added: 40/65² profiles = 61.5%
       • sourced: 37/40 profiles = 92.5%
       • connected: 38/40 profiles = 95%
8. Welches in Wikipedia:
   • We need to make sure that all deceased Welches with Wikipedia entries have profiles on WikiTree, and are sourced and connected to the main tree.
     • Progress:
       • added: 46/114³ profiles = 40.4%
       • sourced: 44/46 profiles = 95.7%
       • connected: 22/46 profiles = 47.8%

Name	Birth	Death	Notable As	Sourced?4	Connected?5
Edward Welch	1806	1868	Welch architect	Two Primary	Yes
Ashbel Welch	1809	1882	American engineer	One Primary	Yes
Alexander Welch	1873	1961	Manitoba politician	Yes	No
Werburg Welch	1894	1990	English artist and Benedictine nun	Two Primary	Yes
Claude E. Welch	1906	1996	American surgeon	One primary	No
Bernard Lewis Welch	1911	1989	English statistician	Yes	No
Don Welch	1932	2016	American poet and English professor	One Primary	No
Christopher Evan Welch	1965	2013	American actor	None primary	No

Resources

• British Surnames: Welch
• G2G feed of questions tagged "Welch".
• House of Names: Welch Crests, Coat of Arms, and Name History Note: a bunch of sites selling coats of arms use this version, but Burke's General Armory lists seven different coats of arms for different Welch individuals, so your line may be associated with a different coat of arms (or none at all, if you can't demonstrate descent from one of the people who were awarded coats of arms).
• Internet Surname Database: Welch
• List of Welches on Wikitree
• Orphaned Welch profiles on WikiTree.
• Unconnected branches with Welch profiles in them (sorted by branch size).
• Unconnected Welch profiles on WikiTree.
• Unsourced Welch profiles on WikiTree.
• Wikipedia: Welch (surname) including a list of notable Welches with articles on Wikipedia that you could add as sources if you happen to be working on one of those profiles.
• WikiTree profiles that link to this page

Footnotes

1. This number is derived by subtracting the number of Welch profiles which are tagged as Unsourced from the total of Welches on WikiTree, so it's not necessarily accurate, since tagging is a manual procedure.
2. This number is derived by taking the 108 Welches listed on ThePeerage.com, and subtracting 3 duplicate entries, 22 entries where Welch is not their Last Name At Birth, and 18 living Welches.
3. This number is derived by taking the 231 Welches listed on Wikipedia, and subtracting 18 entries where Welch is not their Last Name At Birth, 1 fictional character, and 98 living Welches.
4. "Sourced?" asks whether this profile has any source(s) other than Wikipedia. If you can find another source for notable Welch who does not have any other sources, please add it to that profile (then edit this page to put "Yes" in that cell).
5. "Connected?" asks whether this person's profile has been connected to the main tree. If you see links at the bottom of the profile listing how many degrees that person is from the profile of the week, the WikiTreer of the week, and King Henry VIII, then their profile is connected to the main tree. (If so, please edit this page to put "Yes" in that cell.)