Inc. 1967
Tragedy came Sunday, Feb. 2,1941,to the little WPA-built shack on the river shore at Dunlevy which Captain William D. Welch,102-year-old Civil War veteran,and his wife,Elizabeth,57, called home for eight years. Mrs. Welch died in Charleroi-Monessen hospital Sunday morning,February 2,1941, at 9:50 o'clock of pneumonia. She had been ill for less than a week. Besides her husband,Mrs. Welch is survived by one daughter,Elizabeth and two sons, John and George. For several years,after a flatboat on which the Weches lived was destroyed in the St. Patrick's Day flood of 1936,Capt. and Mrs. Welch lived in a tiny shack which they built along the river shore at Dunlevy. Subsequently WPA carpenters built the couple a small house and they have lived there since. Captain "Billy" Welch,who claims to be the last Civil War veteran pensioned,was in the headlines,for two years while Congressman Charles I. Faddis waged a fight to obtain a pension for him in 1936 and 1937. He had been without a pension until then due to the fact that his U.S. Army discharge papers were lost many years ago when his towboat foundered in an Ohio river flood. Mrs. Welch was said to be his second wife. The remains are at the Melenyzer Funeral Home in Belle Vernon,where funeral services will be held Wednesday, February 5 at 2 p.m. Chas. L. Melenyzer is the funeral director in charge.
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