Welches on WikiTree - annual report

Question

Some of the discussion on last weekend's chat revealed that several of us have Welch ancestors in common. (That's "Welch" as in the last name, not as in having ancestors who came from Wales, although as it happens, I have both Welch and Welsh ancestors, but they're not the same people.) That prompted me to start putting together a Free-Space page for a One Name Study on Welch families.

So if you have Welches in your family tree, please check out the page and see what you can add.

Greg

P.S. And, before you ask, yes, Thomas Bramwell Welch, who invented Welch's grape juice, is on WikiTree.

Comments

Arrrrgh! You got me! I did initially read it wrong and have Welsh ancestors, not Welch.

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To answer another question, the famous Racquel married James Welch, it's not her maiden name, and not much is public about James.  To add to the search difficulties, there's another James Welch, about the same age, who was a successful Native American writer.

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My paternal line is Welch. We are from Louisville, KY but now reside all over the US. Prior to my GGG-Grandfather, Anthony (Tony) Welch we have hit a brick wall on his parents. But we have our family on the tree.

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I have family from VA/WV that are Welch with variations of Welsh that don’t seem to make sense as to why it changed. My GGM was Maggie Mae Welch from WV.

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It belatedly occurred to me that people interested in working on people with the surname Welch might possibly be interested in working on the Welch brick wall in my family. The farthest back that we have been able to take that line is John Welch, who was born in Harley, Berkshire about 1783.

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Notable Unconnected Welches:

• Alexander Welch (Canada)
• Benjamin Welch (USA)
• Bernard Lewis Welch (England)
• Christopher Evan Welch (USA)
• Claude Emerson Welch (USA)
• Donovan LeRoy Welch (USA)
• Francis George Welch (USA)
• Frank Welch (USA)
• Hawley Welch (Canada)
• Herbert George Welch (USA)
• James Welch (England)
• James Colin Ross Welch (England)

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Unconnected Welches from ThePeerage.com:

• Richard Minchin Welch (Ireland)

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If anybody who has better access to the necessary sources than I do wants to take a crack at them, here are some of the Welches from ThePeerage.com who I have not been able to create profiles for yet. (In some cases, I do have birth or death dates, but haven't been able to find any source for that person other then ThePeerage.com. In other cases, I haven't even been able to find a birth or death date, without which I can't create a profile even if I wanted to.)

• Charles Edward Welch
• Francis Welch
• Harry Welch
• Henry T. Welch
• I. E. F. Welch
• James Welch
• John George Embleton Welch
• Laura Louise Welch

If you should happen to turn up more information on any of these people, I think Darryl Lundy, who runs ThePeerage.com, would appreciate an update. There is a link to reach him at the bottom of every page on the site.

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Notable Welches with Wikipedia entries, but no WikiTree profiles:

• Adam Cleghorn Welch
• Alan Welch
• Aristedes Welch
• Carolyn Welch
• Claude Welch
• Coley Welch
• Craig Welch
• Curt Welch
• David E. Welch
• Denis Welch
• Dick Welch
• Dwight S. Welch

Answer 1

As of October 1, there were 12,834 WikiTree profiles for people with Welch as their Last Name At Birth. That's an increase of 190 profiles since the beginning of September.

ThePeerage.com lists 108 people with a surname of Welch. Of those, there are three duplicate entries, 18 living people, and 22 people with a different Last Name At Birth, leaving a possible net of 65 Welches. Of the 63 Welches I have tallied so far, 40 have profiles on Wikitree (63.5%). Wikipedia lists 231 people with a surname of Welch. Of those, there are 98 living people, 18 people with a different Last Name At Birth, and one fictional character, leaving a net of 114 deceased notable Welches. Of those, there are profiles for 46 people (40.4%).

The overall percentage of Welch profiles that are connected to the main tree increased slightly from 88.3% to 88.8% during September. The percentage of Welches from Wikipedia that are connected increased from 43.5% to 47.8%. The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com and our family tree that are connected also remained steady at 95% and 100%, respectively.

The number of Welch profiles connected to the main tree has increased by 231 since the beginning of September. The number of profiles that are linked to at least one other profile but not connected to the main tree has increased by 390, and the number of unlinked profiles has decreased by 174! (Apparently, somebody was very busy linking Welch profiles during September!)

The percentage of profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree that have the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line remain steady at 82.5%, 89.1%, and 91.3%, respectively, so i'm skipping the chart this time.

The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com with links back to that person's entry increased from 97.5% to 100% during September. The percentage of Welch profiles from Wikipedia with links back to that person's entry remain steady at 95.7%.

The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family with images on them all remain at 0%, 28.3%, and 30.4%, respectively, as they have since last October. So no chart, because straight lines are boring.

Comments

Of the 12,834 Welch profiles on WikiTree, 411 profiles are currently marked as unsourced, leaving 12,423 profiles (96.8%) at least supposedly sourced. The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree remained steady at 92.5%, 95.7%, and 95.7%, respectively. The change is too small to be visible in the chart, so I'm skipping it this time.

The average sourcing level for Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree remain steady at 2.5, 1.7, and 2.6, respectively. So again, no chart.

Among "tallied" profiles (those from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree), there are no changes in the sourcing level for any profiles, so we'll leave it uncharted.

The percentage of Welch profiles on WikiTree which are partially sourced barely shows as a light orange line. (As the appropriate "Needs More Records" category gets applied to more Welch profiles, this line should get more visible, and as the {{Unsourced}} template gets applies to more Welch profiles where it's needed, the darker orange line should get thicker as well.)

Answer 2

Do you treat it as a variant of Walsh/Welsh? I have one Irish-born brick wall ancestor whose children's death certificates contain all three spellings.

Comments

I'm aware that Welch, like many surnames, comes in all kinds of spelling variants. So far, I'm only tracking people who are actually listed in the records as "Welch" (although I've already found one "Welch" whose father was listed as a "Walsh"). 

To do the job properly, I suppose the study should be expanded to include spelling variants, along with some research into the interrelationships between them. But that seems too much like work for me.  But I should say that I'm not at all averse to letting somebody else take the reins and manage the study. The only reason I started it is because nobody else had. Eventually, I'd like to see One Name Studies for all of the family names of my great-great grandparents, but there is no way I'm going to take on managing 16 One Name Studies! 

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My 3xgreat grandfather used Welch and his descendants have that name. His brother used Whelch, and they have that variation. I know through DNA matching. So that variant would be useful to include. I understand the name means foreign and Walsh is another variant.

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That's OK, Greg - you won't have to take on 16 ONSs.  If you review the Project page, it says you are allowed a maximum of 7 anyway. *grin*

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Ha! I couldn't even handle 7!

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Seven is an odd number (literally and figuratively) given that we each have eight great-grandparents. Well, two of my great-grandparents share the same surname, so I guess I'm okay.

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Since I made the comment about 7 four years ago back in 2019, the rules have changed again and you are only allowed THREE ONSs.

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There's no way that I could possibly manage One Name Studies for all the surnames in my family tree, so I have to trust that other people will step up and manage other surnames. So far, out of the 31 surnames that I have been able to find in the last four generations of my family and my wife's family, 12 have One Name Studies, of which I manage three. I'm hoping that, over time, more people will step up to manage One Name Studies for the rest. (At the very least, that would let me move all the charts out of my Surname Charts profile into the One Name Studies for each surname.)

Answer 3

Greg, I added the 'What Links Here' to the page, so you can see what profiles are linked to the Welch study.  I added one step-grandmother that I have no parents for.

Comments

Actually, Linda, those profiles are already listed in Category:Welch Name Study. The template automatically adds that category.

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The One Name Study page doesn't have them.  That is where I went to see the information that you were looking for.  I have seen that link on the other Space Pages.  If you don't want it, remove it.  I never go to the Category Pages, since the One Name and other pages have more information usually.  I didn't look to see if a category was added

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Huh. Good point. I'm so obsessive about categories that I keep forgetting that not everybody is as into them as I am, and it never even occurred to me that I should link to the category from the text. Fixed now. Thank you for pointing that out.

Answer 4

My mother is descended from the pioneer Welch family who arrived in New Zealand in January 1840. She spent 50 years researching this family. I have her family trees on multiple scrolls. But it is a  daunting prospect to enter all of this. With hundreds of descendants I am hoping others are on here to share the task.

Comments

That's awesome that you have all that information. And don't be afraid to ask for help. WikiTreers are a very helpful bunch. Although having it all on paper might make it hard to get it to other people to help out. If you have a scanner, you might try scanning one sheet at a time, and emailing the scans to people who are willing to enter them for you. If you don't have a scanner, you might want to check with the New Zealand Project to see if anyone in the project lives close enough to you that you could meet up.

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As I confirm DNA matches, I have added those descendants and their families to my tree. So I have a lot of it in my tree of 4,5000 people. But I'm in the process of moving my tree from Family Tree Builder, which sources to persons, to Legacy which sources to events. So I will make smaller GEDCOMs to bring over to WikiTree once I have checked the data. Maybe one line at a time!

Answer 5

I've added some charts to the Welch Name Study page to keep track of various measures. (I have too many projects on the go, so I've decided to make updates to each one once per quarter. The next update for the Welch Name Study is planned for the beginning of January. We'll see if I'm that organised.)

The number of profiles on WikiTree with a Last Name At Birth of Welch has risen over the past two months that I've been keeping track. In September, there were 7,630 Welches on WikiTree, and now we're up to 7,821.

Comments

We now have WikiTree profiles for 12 out of the 59 deceased Welches listed on ThePeerage.com (20.3%), and for 5 out of the 45 deceased Notable Welches listed on Wikipedia (11.1%).

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For the purposes of tracking sourcing, I am not including links to those people's entries on ThePeerage.com or Wikipedia as "sources", and am only measuring the proportion of those profiles which have some other source (BMD, census, etc.). By that measure, 5 out of 59 deceased Welches from ThePeerage.com (8.5%) have profiles on WikiTree with at least one other source, and 2 out of 45 deceased Notable Welches from Wikipedia (4.4%) have profiles with at least one other source. 

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Currently, 10 out of 59 deceased Welches from ThePeerage.com (17%) have profiles which are connected to the main tree on WikiTree, and 1 out of 45 deceased Notable Welches from Wikipedia (2.2%) have profiles which are connected. Overall, 6,894 out of 7,821 Welches on WikiTree (88.2%) are connected to the main tree, which is slightly better than the overall percentage of profiles on WikiTree which are connected to the main tree. 

Answer 6

I've updated the charts on the Welch Name Study page again. And this time, I went ahead and changed the name of this thread to "Welch Name Study Quarterly".

Happily, the number of profiles on WikiTree with a Last Name At Birth of Welch has continued to rise, and the number of sourced and connected Welch profiles have also been rising in parallel.

Progress in adding Welches from WikiTree doesn't look like we've made much progress, but we actually have added a bunch more. The percentage would look higher if I hadn't also found 11 more Welches on Wikipedia who aren't listed on the Welch (surname) page.

Comments

The percentage of Welches on WikiTree which are considered as "Sourced" has remained in a narrow range between 94.4% and 94.7% since September. On the one hand, quite a number of the profiles with the {{Unsourced}} template on them are unlisted, which, in my mind, is a bit unfair, since privacy regulations make it very hard to source most people while they're still alive. (Unless they hit the news or something.) On the other hand, there are probably lots of unsourced Welch profiles on WikiTree which don't have any sources, but don't have the template, either, so even though I track those numbers, they're probably not to be trusted.

The percentage of Welches on Wikipedia (in other words, notable Welches) and on ThePeerage.com which are considered as "sourced" has risen this quarter, as we have been able to add more sources. I appreciate those of you who have helped with that, because I've gone as far nearly as I can with the sources available to me.

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The percentage of Welch profiles connected to the main tree has stuck to an even narrower band (88.1% to 88.2%) than the rate of sourced Welches. The percentage of Welches from ThePeerage.com that are connected to the main tree continues to surpass the percentage of Slades from Wikipedia, and that is probably largely due to the fact that entries on ThePeerage usually link to other family members, which makes it a lot easier to connect them. Both percentages lag well behind Welches as a whole, but those numbers should improve as we work on them.

Answer 7

Thank you for your study Greg. I have added the Welch Name Study category to my 8 x great grandfather Edward Welch who died in 1729 and was buried in the parish of Bletchingdon, Oxfordshire, England. 
I don't know very much about him other than his name. 

The name does seem to vary in the parish registers from Welch to Welsh and back again. 

Comments

Thank you, A.

Looking at Edward's profile, I see that his children were pretty evenly divided between using "Welch" or "Walsh" as a surname, which kind of reinforces Rob's point that we should be including spelling variations.

Answer 8

I've updated the charts on the Welch Name Study page again.

Happily, the number of profiles on WikiTree with a Last Name At Birth of Welch has continued to rise, and the number of sourced and connected Welch profiles have also been rising in parallel. You may notice that the "Sourced" number is rising more slowly, because I went through the Orphaned Welches and added the {{Unsourced}} template where it applied.

Progress in adding Welches from WikiTree looks much better this quarter, but there are still lots of Welches to add from both ThePeerage.com and from WikiTree.

Comments

The percentage of Welches on WikiTree which are considered as "Sourced" has remained in a narrow range between 94.4% and 94.7% since September. On the one hand, quite a number of the profiles with the {{Unsourced}} template on them are unlisted, which, in my mind, is a bit unfair, since privacy regulations make it very hard to source most people while they're still alive. (Unless they hit the news or something.) On the other hand, there are probably hundreds, or possibly even thousands, of unsourced Welch profiles on WikiTree which don't have any sources, but don't have the template, either, so even though I track those numbers, they're probably not to be trusted.

The percentage of Welches on Wikipedia (in other words, notable Welches) and on ThePeerage.com which are considered as "sourced" appear to have taken a dramatic jump this quarter. We have been able to add more sources, but most of the difference is that I've decided to count the sourced profiles as a percentage of the profiles on WikiTree, rather than as a percentage of the people listed on the source. (So, for example, 31 sourced profiles for people listed on ThePeerage.com out of the 34 profiles on WikiTree comes to 91.2% sourced, as opposed to 49.2%, which is what it would be if I were still taking the percentage from the 63 Welches listed on ThePeerage.com. I didn't make that change to make the numbers look better [although they do], but rather to give a more accurate picture of the state of the profiles on WikiTree. [The "Adding Profiles" chart already shows how much farther there is to go there, anyway.])

I've implemented a new measure this quarter, measuring the average sourcing level for Welches on WikiTree (or at least those four subsets of Welches which I'm tracking in my spreadsheet, and thus have sourcing levels for). Sourcing levels are as follows:

3 = 3 or more primary sources, possibly plus secondary sources

2 = 2 primary sources, possibly plus secondary sources

1 = 1 primary source, possibly plus secondary sources

0.5 = One or more secondary sources, no primary sources

0 = Unsourced or unavailable for analysis due to privacy settings

So the goal is to move the average sourcing level to 3, or at least closer to it.

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Just like the percentage of Welches which are "sourced", I have changed the measurement of Welches which are connected, so the numbers have taken a similarly dramatic jump this quarter, but the change more accurately reflects the state of profiles on WikiTree.

I have also added a new dataset to the tracking: Welches in my own Watchlist who are neither on ThePeerage.com nor on Wikipedia. 

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Another new measure I've implemented this quarter is tracking the percentage of profiles in the Welch subsets I'm tracking who have the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line. I have added that template myself to the tops of lines whose profiles I manage myself, and in the orphaned profiles I've come across for heads of lines. For managed profiles, I have sent private messages to the profile managers.

I've also started measuring the average categories per profile. For most people, I would expect profiles for their place of birth and place of death at the very least. For people for whom I have been able to find an occupation in at least two records (census, marriage, or death records), I add the category for that occupation. There are also categories for universities, colleges, and even high schools, and for military units, and various medals and awards. So the low number of categories for most subsets of Welches is probably a sign that they need a lot more research. 

Answer 9

I've updated the charts on the Welch Name Study page again.

Happily, the number of profiles on WikiTree with a Last Name At Birth of Welch has continued to rise, and the number of sourced and connected Welch profiles have also been rising in parallel. 

Progress in adding Welches from WikiTree continues, but there are still lots of Welches to add from both ThePeerage.com and from WikiTree. On Wikipedia, particularly, I'm running out of notable Welches for whom I can find a source other than Wikipedia itself, so progress there is bound to be slower in the future. 

Comments

The percentage of Welches on which are considered as "Sourced" is above 90% for all four data sets, largely because I'm only adding people from ThePeerage.com and Wikipedia if I can source them. On the other hand, there are probably hundreds, or possibly even thousands, of unsourced Welch profiles on WikiTree which don't have any sources, but don't have the template, either, so even though I track those numbers, they're probably not to be trusted.

The average sourcing level for notable Welches actually dropped this quarter, because I've been adding profiles even when I can only find one source.

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The percentage of Welches who are connected to the main tree continues to improve. What doesn't show up in this chart is that, this month, I was able to connect together Welch lines which, while connected to the main tree, were not connected to each other, on three occasions.

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The percentage of profiles from WikiTree who have the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line has gone up, because I have been adding the template as I create the profiles.

Answer 10

I have changed my strategy on working on surnames in my family tree, so I've changed the subject line on this thread, since I'm no longer even going to attempt to update Welches monthly, or even quarterly. Apparently, it's been too long since I checked, because the percentage of deceased notable Welches with profiles on WikiTree plummeted from 58.6% to 35.1%. (Actually, I don't think that there are that many new entries on Wikipedia, so much as that the existing entries are finally getting added to the Welch (surname) page. I've noticed, when working on other surnames, that not every entry for a person with a given surname on Wikipedia is necessarily linked on the page for that surname.)

Actually, the number of Welches on WikiTree has jumped considerably. There were 9,054 Welches on WikiTree at the beginning of November, and 9,809 at the beginning of June. That's a pretty big increase, although it's not out of line with the general trend since I began tracking Welches in 2019.

Comments

Here is a list of a dozen notable Welches who are unconnected, unsourced, or both. (There are plenty more.)

Name	Birth	Death	Notable As	Sourced?	Connected?
Edward Welch	1806	1868	Welch architect	Yes	No
Ashbel Welch	1809	1882	American engineer	None Primary	Yes
Edwin Welch	1838	1916	English surveyor and journalist	Yes	No
Alexander Welch	1873	1961	Manitoba politician	Yes	No
Charles Henry Welch	1880	1967	English theologian	Yes	No
Werburg Welch	1894	1990	English artist and Benedictine nun	Yes	No
Claude E. Welch	1906	1996	American surgeon	None primary	No
Bernard Lewis Welch	1911	1989	English statistician	One	No
Bettina Welch	1922	1993	New Zealand actor	One	Yes
Edward F. Welch Jr.	1924	2008	American Rear Admiral	Yes	No
Don Welch	1932	2016	American poet and English professor	One	No
Christopher Evan Welch	1965	2013	American actor	None primary	No

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Bettina Welch is my cousin, and she is connected to the tree through my family. I added to her profile some time back. Her brother and parents are also added.

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Thank you for adding to her profile. That improves the numbers in my charts.

Answer 11

I've updated the charts on the Welch Name Study page again.

Happily, the number of profiles on WikiTree with a Last Name At Birth of Welch has continued to rise, and the number of sourced and connected Welch profiles have also been rising in parallel. 

Progress in adding Welches from WikiTree continues, but there are still lots of Welches to add from both ThePeerage.com and from WikiTree. On Wikipedia, particularly, I'm running out of notable Welches for whom I can find a source other than Wikipedia itself, so progress there is bound to be slower in the future. 

Comments

The percentage of Welches on which are considered as "Sourced" is above 88% for all four data sets, largely because I'm only adding people from ThePeerage.com and Wikipedia if I can source them. On the other hand, there are probably hundreds, or possibly even thousands, of unsourced Welch profiles on WikiTree which don't have any sources, but don't have the {{Unsourced}} template, either, so even though I track those numbers, they're probably not to be trusted.

The average sourcing level for notable Welches improved this month, because other people have added sources to notable Welch profiles. Thank you for your work!

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The percentage of Welches who are connected to the main tree improved slightly this month. However, the percentage of notable Welch profiles (Welches with entries on Wikipedia) that are connected to the main tree dropped, because I added several new Welch notables to WikiTree, and most of them are not connected yet.
The percentage of profiles from Wikipedia which have the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line has gone up, because I have been adding the template as I create the profiles.

Answer 12

As of September 1, there were 11,526 WikiTree profiles for people with Welch as their Last Name At Birth. That's an increase of 1,061 profiles since the beginning of January.

ThePeerage.com lists 107 Welches. Of those, there three duplicate entries, 20 people with a different Last Name At Birth, and 18 living people, leaving a net of 66 Welches. Of the 61 Welches I have tallied so far, 37 people (60.7%) have profiles on WikiTree. There are 231 Wikipedia entries for Welch. Of those, there are 18 people with a different Last Name At Birth, one fictional character, and 99 living people, leaving a net of 113 notable Welches. Of those, 44 (38.9%) have WikiTree profiles.

The percentage of all Welch profiles that are connected to the main tree has increased slightly from 85.4% to 86.8% since January.

The percentage of profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family trees that have the {{One Name Study|name=Slade}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line stands at 81.1%, 86.4%, and 100%, respectively.

Comments

Of the 11,526 Welch profiles on WikiTree, 442 profiles have the {{Unsourced}} template applied, leaving 11,084 profiles (96.2%) at least supposedly sourced. Of the Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, 91.9% have at least one primary source. Of the Welch profiles from Wikipedia, 88.6% have at least one primary source. Of the Welch profiles from our family trees, 100% have at least one primary source.

The average sourcing level for Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree have remained steady at 2.3, 1.8, and 2.8, respectively.

Answer 13

As of when I finally checked this month (I'm a bit behind because Real Life has been even more insane than usual), there were 11,612 WikiTree profiles for people with Welch as their Last Name At Birth. That's an increase of 86 profiles since the beginning of September.

ThePeerage.com list 107 people with a surname of Welch. Of those, there are three duplicate entries, 18 living people, and 22 people with a different Last Name At Birth, leaving a possible net of 64 Welches. Of the 63 Welches I have tallied so far, 39 have profiles on Wikitree (61.9%). Wikipedia lists 232 people with a surname of Welch. Of those, there are 98 living people, 18 people with a different Last Name At Birth, and one fictional character, leaving a net of 115 deceased notable Welches. Of those, there are profiles for 46 people (40%).

The overall percentage of Welch profiles that are connected to the main tree increased slightly from 86.8% to 86.9% last month. The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com that are connected also increased slightly from 94.6% to 94.9%. The percentage of Welches from Wikipedia that are connected dropped from 40.9% to 39.1% due to the creation of two new profiles which haven't been connected yet.

I'm adding a new measure this year, showing the percentage of profiles which are connected to the main tree, not connected to the main tree but linked to at least one other profile, and not linked to any other profile. (This measure is made possible by Aleš's cool reports.) Hopefully, over time, you should see the percentage of unlinked and unconnected profiles going down, and the percentage of connected profiles going up.

The percentage of profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree that have the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line currently stand at 82.1%, 89.1%, and 91.3%, respectively.

Comments

Of the 11,612 Welch profiles on WikiTree, 435 profiles are currently marked as unsourced, leaving 11,177 profiles (96.3%) at least supposedly sourced. The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com with at least one primary source rose from 91.9% to 92.3% over the course of the month. The percentage of Welch profiles from Wikipedia with at least one primary source rose from 90.9% to 93.5%. The Welch profiles from our family tree remained steady at 95.7%.

The average sourcing level for Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree currently stand at 2.5, 1.7, and 2.6, respectively.

I have added another new measure for sourcing levels, showing the percentage of "tallied" profiles (profiles from Wikipedia and our watchlists) at each sourcing level. Hopefully, over time, you should see the percentage of profiles at level 0 (unsourced) and level 0.5 (no primary sources) go down, and the number of profiles at level 3 (three or more primary sources) go up.

And still another new measure. This one shows the percentage of "tallied" profiles and WikiTree as a whole which are unsourced, partially sourced (at least a secondary source), and "fully" sourced* (at least three primary sources). This chart shows the difficulty in measuring sourcing levels for WikiTree as a whole, or even a single Last Name At Birth on WikiTree: for the tallied profiles, I depend on the counts in my spreadsheet, where I assign sourcing levels as I check the profiles. For WikiTree as a whole, I depend on WikiTree to get a count of profiles with the {{Unsourced}} template, and WikiTree+ (thank you, Aleš!) to get a count of profiles with either [[Category:More_Records_Needed]] or [[Category:Profiles_with_Incomplete_Sourcing]]. (I imagine that the Categorization Project will merge those two category hierarchies eventually.) But because both templates and categories are applied manually, there are a ton of profiles to which they should be applied, but haven't been yet. So that's why the tallied profiles show as about 50% "fully sourced", while all profiles show as about 95% "fully sourced". (This is one big reason why I keep saying that such-and-such a percentage of profiles on WikiTree is "supposedly" sourced.)

 * Yes, I know that three primary sources doesn't actually qualify as fully sourced, because ideally every fact stated in a biography should be backed up by at least one primary source, but I based my sourcing levels on the work of Paul Gierszewski, who first came up with a system for measuring how well profiles are sourced.

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And two final new measures:

First, I've been measuring the number of profiles of people listed on ThePeerage.com and Wikipedia which contain links to those people's entries on the respective site, but I hadn't been tracking how those numbers changed over time up to now. Over the course of September, the percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com with links back to that person's entry rose from 37% to 100%. The percentage of profiles for notable Welches that link back to their Wikipedia entries rose from 41% to 95.7%. (Yes, having finally mostly completed the tally, I got to work on linking to sources.)

Second, I'm also starting to track how many profiles have images on them. That is, photos, paintings, drawings, etc. portraying the person whose profile it is. So, even though I think it's better to have things like pictures of gravestones, the old family home, etc. than no image at all, I'm not counting those in this measure. The percentage of profiles from ThePeerage.com with images on them remains at 0%. The percentage of profiles from Wikipedia with images on them decreased from 29.5% to 28.3% over the course of the month. The number of profiles from our family tree with images remained steady at 30.4%.

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If I could find a source for their father, I could connect two brothers https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Whelch-9 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Welch-2301. There seems to be no mechanism at present on WikiTree when there are known siblings but the parents are not known. I have more than one example of that situation.

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Actually, you used to be able to link siblings, and that would generate an "Unknown" profile for their common father. But I don't think you can do that anymore. Probably because so many "Unknown" profiles were getting generated, but never filled in or sourced.

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The more observant of you have probably noticed stray other surnames in these reports. That's because I copy and paste the text from a previous report and edit to suit. I usually get the numbers right (I think?), but sometimes I mess up on the surnames. Because one of the surnames I work on in August is "French", and "Welch" is one of the surnames I work on in September, I'm bound to slip up on an edit eventually and started talking about "Wench" profiles. Should that happen, please don't laugh in my face. Laugh at me behind my back like everybody else...

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I greatly appreciate the work you do on this, Greg, and it's so easy to forget to do a change for a copy and paste. We know who you are talking about.

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Thank you, Margaret.

Answer 14

As of yesterday, there were 12,644 WikiTree profiles for people with Welch as their Last Name At Birth. That's an increase of 745 profiles since the beginning of January.

ThePeerage.com lists 107 people with a surname of Welch. Of those, there are three duplicate entries, 18 living people, and 22 people with a different Last Name At Birth, leaving a possible net of 64 Welches. Of the 63 Welches I have tallied so far, 40 have profiles on Wikitree (63.5%). Wikipedia lists 231 people with a surname of Welch. Of those, there are 98 living people, 18 people with a different Last Name At Birth, and one fictional character, leaving a net of 114 deceased notable Welches. Of those, there are profiles for 46 people (40.4%).

The overall percentage of Welch profiles that are connected to the main tree increased slightly from 86.9% to 88.3% since last October. The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com that are connected also increased slightly from 94.9% to 95%. The percentage of Welches from Wikipedia that are connected increased from 39.1% to 43.5%.

The number of Welch profiles connected to the main tree has increased by 791 since the beginning of January. The number of profiles that are linked to at least one other profile but not connected to the main tree has decreased by 42, and the number of unlinked profiles has decreased by four. (Yes, total number of unconnected Welch profiles has decreased by 46 so far this year!)

The percentage of profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree that have the {{One Name Study|name=Welch}} template applied to the first Welch profile in that line currently stand at 82.5%, 89.1%, and 91.3%, respectively.

The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com and Wikipedia with links back to that person's entry stand at 97.5%, and 95.7%, respectively.

The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family with images on them all remain at 0%, 28.3%, and 30.4%, respectively, as they have since last October. So no chart, because straight lines are boring.

Comments

Of the 12,644 Welch profiles on WikiTree, 417 profiles are currently marked as unsourced, leaving 12,227 profiles (96.7%) at least supposedly sourced. The percentage of Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com with at least one primary source rose from 92.3% to 92.5% since last October. The percentage of Welch profiles from Wikipedia with at least one primary source rose from 93.5% to 95.7%. The Welch profiles from our family tree remained steady at 95.7%.

The average sourcing level for Welch profiles from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree currently stand at 2.5, 1.7, and 2.6, respectively.

Among "tallied" profiles (those from ThePeerage.com, Wikipedia, and our family tree), the number of profiles with no primary sources (level 0.5) has decreased by one, the number of profiles with one primary source (level 1) has decreased by two, the number of profiles with two primary sources (level 2) has decreased by three, and the number of profiles with three or more primary sources (level 3) has increased by seven.

The percentage of Welch profiles on WikiTree which are partially sourced barely shows as a light orange line. (As the appropriate "Needs More Records" category gets applied to more Welch profiles, this line should get more visible, and as the {{Unsourced}} template gets applies to more Rucks profiles where it's needed, the darker orange line should get thicker as well.)

Answer 15

My mother was a Welch. She traces her line back to John Welch of Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1790-1859). I apparently added him to WT as a newbie when I still thought "unsourced family tree handed down to..." was an acceptable source. I'll have to pull out my notes and get some proper sources up.

He moved to Ohio and his family were later homesteaders in Kansas and Nebraska.