William Pringle Welsh

  General Notes:

From Welsh family notes:

William Pringle Welsh was a brass finisher in England. One day he came home and announced to his family that they were going to Canada. In 1910 he left England for Canada to get things settled for his family to arrive, and in 1911 the family made the trip over in a ship, which seemed to take forever, according to Edward Welsh, who was only 4 years old at the time. The family lived in Peterborough in a brown brick house while William worked as a tool and die man in the factory. When they had saved enough money, William and Mary bought a farm and moved out to start farming it. There they stayed, the boys leaving home for the western part of Canada to harvest wheat and Edward wandered on to the United States and settled more or less around Flint apprenticing as a tool and die man in the factories there. When William was in his 50s, he had a heart attack, and the doctor advised him that he should sell the farm and start taking things a little bit easier. At this time, the couple sold out their farm and bought a little white cottage on Lake Chemung near Peterborough. About this time, Mary, who was acting as a midwife, delivered a woman of a male child, and the woman did not want him. Mary and William decided to take care of the "wee thing" and eventually they adopted him as Robert James Welsh. By this time, son Frederick had married a local girl, Thelma Foster and had a son Donald, however Thelma did not want to raise him and so his grandparents took him in too to raise along with Robert. Late in life, they became parents all over again. They stayed at Chemung for approximately 10 years and then bought a beautiful log cabin on Lakefield Lake not far from the little community Lakefield. It was there that William devoted hours and hours on the flowers which abounded about the property and it was there in 1958 that Mary died. William continued on there for several years, until his health was not good and at that time, he sold the cottage to Don and his wife Bernice. William then went to live for a year with his son, Edward, in Michigan, returning to Peterborough to buy a trailer and living in it in a trailer park until 1967 when he died quite suddenly from a heart attack.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Picture: William Pringle Welsh Gravestone: Lakefield Cemetery, Lakefield, Ontario.

William married Wilhelmine Mona Nelson on 15 Feb 1883 in N. Shields, England. (Wilhelmine Mona Nelson was born on 15 Feb 1883 in North Shields, England, died on 23 May 1958 in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada and was buried in Lakefield Cemetery, Lakefield, Ontario.)