James Ely Welch — another member of the pioneer brigade, and cotemporary with Rev. John M. Peck, whose history closed the preceding chapter, was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, February 28,1789, not far from the present city of Lexington. His father, James Welch, and mother, Nancy Ely, were both natives of Virginia, the former of whom was born February 7, 1750; died August 2, 1828; and the latter was born Oct. 27, l767, and died August 7, 1837.When young Welch was about 10 years old, his father commenced sending him to a country school in the neighborhood. He continued occasionally to attend schools, kept by different masters, for a period of five or six years. When nearly 17 years old he left his father to work with his eldest brother, who was by trade a mill-wright, with whom he continued, except at intervals, until he was 19 years of age. He then taught school in the summer and worked in Lexington in the winter, until he reached the age of 21. He again made his father's house his home, doing business in the neighborhood. During the summer of 1810 it pleased the Lord to open his eyes and show him that he was a poor lost sinner, justly exposed to His wrath. In the fall of the same year he made a public profession of the Lord Jesus, and on the 26th of October was baptized by Rev. J. Vardeman, and united with the church at David's Fork, about two miles from where he wars born. Mr. Welch thus speaks of this part of his life:
"In the summer of 1810, when I had just entered my 22d year, the Rev. J. Vardeman announced from the pulpit on the Sabbath, that as there were to be a barbecue and a dance at Montgomery's Spring on the 4th of July, he would preach at the meeting-house, and invited all the members to attend and to bring their children with them. When I heard the appointment and request, I had a ticket in my pocket, and decidedly intended to be one of the party on the Fourth. When the day arrived, my father said to me in the morning, 'My son, you are your own man, and have the right to go to that frolic today, if you choose; but if you will gratify me, you will go with us to David's Fork.' That was all he said, but when he had retired it left me in serious thought, which resulted in a determination to gratify my father and let those attend the ball who might. * * * * Nor do I ever expect, while time and eternity may last, to cease praising God that I was induced to gratify my parents on that occasion instead of myself; for on going to the meeting I listened to the first sermon I ever really heard, from 1 Sam. 7;12: 'Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.' Before a profession of religion was made, I had a private conversation with Bro. Vardeman on the state of my feelings and the exercises of my mind -- that on a certain occasion, while at a meeting, such were the manifestations of the love of God to my own soul that I scarcely could restrain myself from getting upon one of the seats and exhorting sinners to 'flee from the wrath to come.' He cooly, and unfortunately for me, replied, 'you had better take care, lest you run before you are sent.' That remark caused me more anxiety and anguish of soul than any remark I ever heard. Full one year I was unhappy at meeting and alone. The ardent desire of my soul was to warn and beseech sinners to be reconciled to God; yea, I felt, 'Wo is me,' if I do not do it; and then would come the warning voice of my father in the gospel, 'Take care lest you run before you are sent.' Neither my own parents, nor anyone else, knew the exercises of my mind, but I deliberately decided, 'I cannot live so;' and yet such were the views of my unfitness, that I never should have entered the ministry could I have enjoyed peace of mind without it. The question of deepest anxiety was, what can I do which promises any deliverance from the dilemma in which I feel myself to be? Finally, I concluded to travel, and see whether new scenes and new acquaintances would bring any relief, and if I must preach, I had rather begin among strangers, for 'a prophet hath no honor in his own country and among his own kin.' But where to go, was the question. Knowing that I had an aunt in Georgia, to Georgia, in the fall of 1811, I directed my steps, with no worldly business whatever in view, but perhaps upon the same errand that took Jonah. aboard ship for Tarshish." (Western Watchman, vol. IX.)
After spending an anxious winter in Georgia, he made his first attempt at preaching in March, 1812, in the Sharon Church, of which the distinguished Abram Marshall was pastor. Bro. Welch thus describes his struggles in that state:
"I never studied more closely, nor more hours during the day and night, than while I remained in Georgia, and yet I had no instructor and but few books to aid me. I had been literally born in a cane-brake, brought up on a farm, and had never studied geography, history, or even grammar, when I commenced my labors in the gospel at 23; and no individual, except the infinitely wise One, can tell with what readiness and joy the advantages of instruction now enjoyed by young men would have been embraced. The Baptists had no theological seminary, nor even a private instructor of whom I had ever heard, where a young man might pursue those theological studies which would enable him 'rightly to divide the word of truth.' Those of us who entered the ministry forty-five years ago [this was written about twenty years ago], know what it is to meet with discouragements, and sometimes when treated discourteously by young men who were educated in those seminaries which we labored to establish, human nature could not do less than to say, 'Well! we have had our day!' No other young men, thanks to the All-wise Disposer of events, need ever in future pass through the difficulties with which we had to contend. I question whether any mortal suffered more from a man-fearing spirit than I did in my early efforts at public speaking; to whom it was a greater tax upon the nervous system to arise and address an assembly, than it was upon me; and especially if there happened to be one or two aged ministers present. If experience teaches truly, I can safely say to my young brethren in the ministry, that of all the hearers you may ever have, you have the least to fear from a father in the gospel. He will hear you with more charity and allowance than any hearer you have. Perhaps that dread of public speaking might have deterred me altogether, but for the counsel and encouragement given by old Father Marshall, who would often say, 'Bro. James, if you ever wish to make a preacher, preach'; and so say I, to you young ministers still; for 'practice makes perfect.'" (Western Watchman, vol. IX.)
In the spring of 1814 he returned to his native state; in the summer of the same year visited and preached in Missouri for the first time; returned again and traveled and preached almost incessantly through most of the country north of the Kentucky River.
His mother church, David's Fork, called him to ordination, which occurred March 2, 1815, at the hands of Jeremiah Vardeman and Davis Biggs. He was now 26 years old. In the fall of this year he went to school and studied English grammar, which was his first instruction in this science.
In the spring of 1816 he visited Philadelphia for the purpose of securing an appointment from the Triennial Convention as a missionary to the Far West, to labor among a people, as he said, "who had enjoyed no better advantages than himself." He spent one year in the Quaker City, under the tuition and training of the celebrated Dr. William Staughton. In this "school of the prophets" he laid the foundation for that celebrity which he subsequently attained as a minister.
The Triennial Convention met in Philadelphia in May, 1817, and Welch offered his services to establish a mission in St. Louis, in company with his classmate, Eld. J. M. Peck. They were accepted, and on the 25th of the same month were set apart for that mission.
The following is somewhat characteristic of Mr. Welch. He says: "In view of that event" — the going on a mission to the Missouri Territory — "I had previously made arrangements, which, when consummated, would prove my faith in the Divine declaration, 'It is not good that man should be alone,' and consequently Dr. Staughton declared, on the 28th of May, 1817, in the presence of witnesses, that I was no longer a single man, but that thereafter James E. Welch and Sarah Ann Craft should be considered man and wife." This event occurred in Burlington, New Jersey, Mrs. Welch's native state.
After a long journey of 1,100 miles by land, in their own conveyance, Mr. Welch and his young wife reached St. Louis, Nov. 21, 1817, and found a home at the residence of John Jacoby, until he could rent a house. We give a few words from his own pen relative to his perilous trip:
"On Tuesday, November 11, 1817, I left Shawneetown in company with Mrs. W., on our unpleasant journey to St. Louis. It had rained for three weeks every day, except three or four, and all the streams were overflowing their banks. We should have remained at Shawneetown several days longer but for apprehended danger. In our efforts to reach the highlands, we traveled three or four miles through water from two to three feet deep, and ere the Ohio had attained to high water mark but few houses were left standing in the village. Bro. Peck having, taken his family on board of a keel boat, with the intention of going by water to St. Louis and leaving his Yankee wagon behind, and I agreeing to take his horse across Illinois for him, while traveling in a chaise or gig myself, I had of course to drive tandem; and before we reached St. Louis we perceived that it was a very fortunate arrangement for us; for had it not been for the length of our team, several streams and mud-holes which we were compelled to pass, might not otherwise have been crossed at all. We came to one stream about twenty feet broad, and perhaps six feet deep, upon the banks of which were encamped eight or ten families with traveling wagons, waiting for the waters to subside. A tree had been felled across it, upon which were safely transported trunk, cushions, etc., when I drove my tandem team into the water, gave them the whip, and others caught them as they came out. The philosophy of the who1e operation was, that by the time the carriage got into deep water, the front horse could reach bottom on the opposite shore." (Western Watchman, vol. VIII.)
When Eld. Welch arrived ill St. Louis it was a town of about 3,000 inhabitants, a majority of whom were French Catholics. He entered at once upon his labors, and early in the following February aided in the formation of the First Baptist Church, St. Louis. Soon after this, he and Peck organized the first Sunday-school for colored people, which grew in a little over a month to 90 scholars. On the morning of April 5th he baptized two converts from the school in the Mississippi River, the first, doubtless, in St. Louis.
Of the first Baptist house of worship in St. Louis, Eld. Welch says: "In the month of April, 1818, we purchased of a Mr. Patton a lot 40x80 feet, on the southwest corner of Third and Market, for $600, upon which to erect our new meeting-house. This being the corner of a much larger lot owned by Mr. P., we were fearful he might erect a building along the whole side of our meeting-house, and thus deprive us entirely of light and air from the south. It was therefore stipulated in the deed, that he should be at liberty to join our meeting-house on the south, twenty feet on Third Street, and he bound himself not to approach our lot nearer than ten feet with any other building.
"Not long afterwards Mr. P. did actually erect a building on the south, joining the meeting-house and running back twenty feet. That was the building erected by Mr. Patton for his own use and with his own means, and with which Bro. Peck and myself had no more to do than the Emperor of China, about which a wicked Craig, and some of our prejudiced and uninformed brethren in Kentucky have said so many wicked things." (Western Watchman, vol. VIII.)
St. Louis was, at that time, a hard field of labor. Stores were kept open, mechanics worked, carts were driven along the streets, and fiddling and dancing were heard on the Lord's day as on other days. There was also no small amount of infidelity and even atheism in a certain circle.
Bro. Welch by no means confined his labors to St. Louis and vicinity. He, like his co-laborer, J. M. Peck, made extended preaching tours in the territory, gathered together the scattered sheep of the fold, organized churches in the pioneer settlements, visited associations, &c. He spent three years of active ministerial life in preaching the gospel in the settlements in the counties of St. Charles, Warren, Montgomery, Callaway, Boone and Howard, north of the Missouri River; and in almost all that part of the territory now known as Southeast Missouri, as far down the Mississippi River as Scott County and the Tywappity Bottom. Besides the First Church in St. Louis, he aided in organizing churches in the village of St. Charles, also at Flanders Callaway's in Warren County, called Friendship, and Salem, at Wm. Coats' in Callaway County. He was untiring in his labors, and did his full share in giving tone and proper direction to religious sentiment in this new and rapidly developing country. Of an important work connected with his mission, Eld. We1ch says: "On Sabbath, December 18, 1819, we organized in the Baptist meeting-house the "St. Louis Sabbath-school Society," under very encouraging prospects; for some of the most influential individuals in the community gave it their countenance and support. That was more than four years before the American Sunday-school Union was constituted, and from that day to this, in no city or town in the land, has the Sunday-school cause found warmer friends than in St. Louis." (Western Watchman, vol. VIII.)
Of the abandonment of the "Western Mission," and Mr. Welch's removal to New Jersey, he says: "I left St. Louis, and ceased to labor as a missionary in the West, because the Board of Missions gave up the station in St. Louis. They were influenced in their decision by the urgent solicitations of individual brethren, associations, and missionary societies in the West, to establish other stations at Natchez, Baton Rouge, Natchitoches, and other places, which they regarded as fields of equal importance and promise as that at St. Louis. Unavoidably the station at St. Louis was an expensive one at the time it was occupied by Bro. Peck and myself. Rather, therefore, than establish three or four other missions in the West, the board thought it better to give up the one at St. Louis.
"When the appointment of Bro. Peck and myself was before the convention in 1817, a committee was appointed to see us, and learn whether we would not take an appointment to St. Louis for three years by way of experiment. We had an interview with Rev. Wm. Warder, of Kentucky, as one of that convention, and when he informed us of the wishes of the convention, we replied, 'No, sir, unless our appointment be for life, we will take none at all -- we will go upon our own hook first.' Under that explicit declaration we were appointed; and yet the board thought best — and perhaps it was best -- to give up the mission at the end of three years, for the reasons above stated, together with a supposed 'numerous emigration of ministers to our western settlements.' They expressed a 'sincere wish that he [I] may be rendered 'useful in St. Louis,' and voted 'that Mr. Peck be associated with Mr. McCoy, at the Illinois station among the Indians.' Never having offered himself as a missionary, or agreed to live among the Indians, instead of joining Mr. McCoy, he passed over into Illinois, settled in St. Clair County, and gave immortality to a certain 'Rock Spring.' That unexpected discontinuance of the mission gave such a shock to my pecuniary affairs, that I found myself unable to sustain the cause in St. Louis unaided and alone; and consequently three of the most toilsome and unpleasant years of my life were comparatively thrown away — all the vantage ground we had gained was given up. On the 6th of October, 1820, I left St. Louis, on my return to Burlington, N. J., where I had labored in the gospel and baptized between 35 and 40 individuals into the fellowship of the church while studying with Dr. Staughton!" (Recollections of the West, chap. 22.)
Soon after his arrival in New Jersey, he resumed his labors as pastor in Burlington, and also filled this office in Trenton and Mount Holly. Thus he continued to labor until feeble health, owing to chronic dyspepsia, compelled him to resign. He first tried sea-bathing, and this failing, he made a horse-back trip to St. Louis and back, in 1823, to regain his health.
From the time of his first visit to Missouri in 1814, Eld. Welch kept his eye and his heart on this state as a field of labor, and after a moderately successful ministry in New Jersey, he again removed to Missouri in 1826, and fixed his habitation on the margin of a beautiful prairie in what is now Warren County, and improved one of the most beautiful farms in the West. Here he spent his time in preaching to the destitute and cultivating and improving his farm for two years, when he again moved East on account of the health of his wife.
From 1828 to 1848 he labored under the appointment of the American Sunday-school Union, either as Sunday-school missionary or as financial agent, in which latter service he was very successful.
In November, 1848, he again removed to Missouri, and re-entered upon the occupancy of his farm in Warren County, not far from which he built up and became pastor of Union Church about two years after. Under his ministrations the church built an excellent house of worship, and was much prospered. The last twenty-eight years of his life, save one, were spent in Missouri, during which time he continued his ministerial labors even very near to the period of his death. He was frequently called to fill important positions in the meetings of his brethren. In 1851 he was elected moderator of the Ministers' and Deacons' Conference of the state, and for some years was so continued. At the organization of the Bear Creek Association in 1854, he was appointed moderator, which office he filled for nearly ten years. It was as presiding officer that he excelled.
Mr. Welch was twice married; the first time to Miss Sarah Ann Craft. Four children crowned this marriage, all of whom died before the aged father. The youngest son, Aikman Welch, was an eminent lawyer, and for several years previous to his death filled the responsible office of Attorney General of Missouri.
Mrs. Welch died in Warren County, Mo., May 23, 1864, aged 77 years. He was again married in the spring of 1865, to Mrs. Mary H. Gardner, of Burlington, N. J., who died in Warren County, Mo., at the age of 64 years. The last two years of his life he spent with the family of his youngest son, at Warrensburg, Mo., a part of which time he supplied the Baptist church in that place as pastor.
Under the appointment of Gov. Hardin, he visited the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in July, 1876, accompanied by his grand-daughter, Miss Jennie Welch, and grandson, Master Aikman Welch, Jr.
On July 18, 1876, in company with relatives and friends, he went on an excursion to the sea beach. After dinner a bath was proposed, and he readily consented. He had been in the water but a few moments when he complained of severe pain in the stomach. He was immediately carried from the water, which was very cold, hastily dressed, being aided by his son-in- law, Mr. Noah E. Wright, of Burlington, N. J., and helped to a house by the road-side, about a half mile from the beach. By this time the pain was intense, and his friends gently rested him in a large chair on the verandah. The last words of this venerable pioneer were, "The pain is so great I cannot express it." And thus in about one hour the great enemy tore the tabernacle down, and James E. Welch was no more. He died of congestion, in the afternoon of July 18, 1876, and was buried in the city of Burlington, where he was first married nearly sixty years before.
At the time of his death Eld. Welch was nearly 88 years old, having spent more than 64 years in the ministry.
He was a man of a high order of intellect and culture, and in full possession of all his faculties up to the hour of his death. He was unbending in his purpose, earnest in his religious devotion, and an able minister of the New Testament. He was exceedingly regular and temperate in his habits, and had an iron constitution, especially in his middle and later life. Few men, if any, possessed greater firmness and decision of character than he. These sketches must now close. Our venerable father in the gospel lived a long, eventful and useful life, and now sweetly rests from his labors, having ascended far above toil and care and pain. Long will he live in the memories and affections of the denomination to whose interest he devoted so many years of his life.
========== [From Robert S. Duncan, A History of the Baptists of Missouri, 1881; rpt. 1981, pp. 94-104. — Scanned by Jim Duvall]
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