Bridges in the USA

Jesse Welsh and Martha Jane McCrory were married on September 13, 1860, in Polk County. He fa thered ten children with wife Marth Jan; William Franklin (1861), Mary Jan (1863), Rhoda Adel ine (1865), Lucinda Belle (1867), Laura Eleanor (1870), Samuel Morgan (1873), James Benton (1 875), Luisa Mae, also known as "Ida" (1878), Jesse Easter (1881), and a child who died in inf ancy.

In 1883, Jesse married Nancy A. Potts (nee Dysart), and they had two children: son Elmer Aust in, and a son named Charles Erastus, who died in infancy. Nancy died on March 31, 1897. Jess e married Sadie Jarnigan in 1898.

A Civil War veteran, Jesse served as a private in the Missouri Regiment, from July of 1861 t o April of 1863. He was discharged at that time due to a hand that was crippled by rheumatism .

Jesse died of acute Bright's disease (chronic inflamation of the kidneys) and lung troubles . He is buried in the Welsh Cemetery in Polk County, as are his first two wives, Martha Jan e and Nancy.

Licking county, the birthplace of Jesse Welsh, is located northeast of Columbus. Befor it wa s settled by white men, the territory was considered by one writer to be a "waste, howling wi lderness." In 1751, the first whites to pass through these lands found Delaware, Wyandot, an d Shawnee Indians, and had to contend with venomous serpents, birds of prey, wolves, bears, a nd panthers. Licking bore the nickname "Old Fort" due to the curious earthworks that can be f ound throughout the county. These forts and mounds were constructed by a prehistoric Indian r ace commonly called "the Mound-Builders." (the same kinds of earthen mounds can be found in F ayette County, Pennsylvania, and Sangamon County, Illinois, counties that figure significantl y in the ancestry of Gerald Leon Whited.)