About

In 1903, John Bernard Welch brought his wife and young family west, where they eventually settled in Berkeley, California. They lived and died there, with their youngest daughter Dortha passing in 1991. The Welches were uniquely positioned in time to experience the 1906 earthquake, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the Berkeley Hills fire, WW1, women’s suffrage, prohibition, the Great Depression, WWII, the post war baby boom, the Korean war, the McCarthy era, the civil rights movement, the assassination of one president and the resignation of another, the Vietnam wars and the end of the cold war.

When John courted Cornelia, it was with a horse and buggy. When he moved to California, they took a train for several days. Though he never drove a car, his young daughters owned them. That same trip across the country took them a few hours by plane. Originally farmers, they saw a bushel of grain that took 100 manhours to produce could now be done harvested in under ten. New vaccines meant that the polio that struck Ruth’s only son and the measles that wiped out 5 of their neighbor’s children were no longer a threat. News went from weekly papers to nightly programs on colored televisions. They saw electricity installed in their homes along with telephones that could call across the nation. And oh, the plumbing! They saw one of greatest times of change in human history. Even the Internet was in its infancy but on it’s way when Dortha passed in 1991.

They weren’t rich, they weren’t famous, yet they lived in amazing times and their stories are compelling. These pages, a work in progress, hope to tell a few of those stories and keep their memories alive.