Mr. Welch was born at Holliday’s Cove, in Virginia (now West Virginia), September 3, 1841, but in 1845 his parents removed to the neighborhood of Uhricksville, Tuscarawas Co., Ohio, where he passed his youth. He was graduated at Washington and Jefferson College, Pa., in 1868. He entered Princeton Seminary in the same year, and remained here two years, after which he spent one year in Union Seminary, in New York City. He was licensed to preach by Steubenville Presbytery, April 26, 1870, and was ordained as an evangelist by the same Presbytery Sept. 4, 1871, and after residing for a short time at Uhricksville, went to Utah where he began to preach Oct. 1, 1871, at Salt Lake City. For months his little congregation met for worship in the upper room of a livery stable. There he gathered and organized a Presbyterian Church of which he was the first the stated supply, and afterward the pastor until his death. After strenuous and persevering efforts, visiting Eastern cities and Synods, and urgently soliciting aid, he succeeded in erecting a neat and commodious church edifice. His labors at Salt Lake City were largely blessed, were very important, and widely influential. On Oct. 13, 1875, he was married to Miss Emma Coyner, and in April 1876 came east with his wife to visit relatives, and to attend the sessions of the General Assembly in Brooklyn, N. Y., to which he was a commissioner. While in Brooklyn his health failed. He returned to Uhricksville, Ohio, with his wife, and died there in the home of his boyhood, of Bright’s disease of the kidneys, after a protracted illness, on Sabbath morning, March 18, 1877, in the 36th year of his age.
Mr. Welch was widely known and loved as a patient, active and successful Missionary of the Board of Home Missions during his entire ministry. His young and devoted wife came to the East with him some months before his death, but died suddenly in August, 1876, in the same room in which he afterwards breathed his last. All through his illness he possessed a calm and peaceful mind, adorning the Gospel he had professed and preached.
Source: [Anonymous], Necrological Reports and Annual Proceedings of the Alumni Association of Princeton Theological Seminary, Vol. 1 (1875—1889) (Princeton: C. S. Robinson & Co., 1891), pp. 46-47.