This week’s Surname Saturday is about my mother’s paternal grandmother’s family, the Weltys. I’ll be honest, I haven’t really done much with this line. I can’t tell you exactly why I haven’t done much on this line, other than I had specific goals on most of my other lines, and one never really developed here. The ironic part of that is that upon looking at the information that I do have on this line, it appears that I have information further back on them than I do on several of my others!
Surname: Welty
Variations: I have not run across any specific variations in my line so far, but a few that I have seen that may come up are Weldy and Wilty.
Origins: The information that I have for this line traces them back to John Welty, born 21 Apr 1720 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It appears that my line of the family began moving west from there with John’s son Michael and his grandson Henry. My 2nd Great Grandfather, Francis Marion Welty (sometimes seem as Marion Francis Welty) was born in Ohio in June 1849. Amazingly, I have not obtained positive proof on that date yet. Most of the information that I have on Francis and his ancestors came from a compiled genealogy with no source notes, so at this point, I’m not calling anything “confirmed” other than my Great Grandmother, Lola (Welty) Link was born 27 Aug 1875 to Francis Welty and Emma (Pool) Welty.
Challenges/Goals: This one should be pretty obvious – my main goal now with this family is to start the process of proving the lineage all the way back to John Welty. A quick survey of resources has shown me that this may actually be easier than it was for some of my other lines as it appears there are Sons of the American Revolution and possibly Daughters of the American Revolution files pointing to the Welty line as well as quite a few records for the early ancestors. This one should end up being a fun pursuit (aren’t they all fun?)!
Digging Up Roots 