Biographical data - family

              EXTRACTS FROM GENEVIEVE SHAW'S LETTER
Note: Mrs. Mary B. Welch visited her daughter, Mrs. A. B. Shaw, in Des Moines
during the period when my husband, Mr. Freeman R. Conaway, and Mr. Shaw were
business partners. I was impressed with her beauty and with her gracious,
charming personality; she was always stylishly gowned, yet with simple, exquisite
taste.
~enevieve Shaw, granddaughter of Mary B. Welch, lives in Pasadena, with her father.
Extracts from a recent letter, received from Miss Shaw, gives an intimate account
of Mary B. Welch.
Grandmother was nineteen, with two children, when her first husband died.
Soon afterward she taught in the Detroit Female Seminary, where her brother•in­law
was president. Later she married Dr. A. S. Welch and lived in Florida, where
he had a large plantation. He was sent to Washington and in a short time was
appointed President at Ames. Dr. ~elch died in 1889, in Santa Barbara, with
Grandmother and his brother, D. M. Welch, with him. At her husband's request, a
few years later, she married the President's brother, D. M. Welch, a wealthy,
retired wholesale grocer of New Haven, Connecticut. They always spent their
winters in California where they maintained quite a pretentious home.
I am sending you some pictures and a church magazine with an article
Grandmother wrote for a missionary group. It throws a new light on her many­sided
character. After her last marriage she became quite ac~ive in the Methodist
Church, as Mr. Welch was a member, and prominent in that denomination. Of course
you know she never did anything half-way, so she entered into this with great vim,
but after Grandfather's death, she returned to the Episcopal Church, as her sister
was living with her and it seemed foolish for them to attend different churches
and have different church activities. So she took a Sunday School Class of young
men about fifteen years of age and became such an influence with them that as
they grew to manhood they still stayed in her class. She entertained them
frequently at her home, and they were just like her own boys or grandsons. In
fact, we had a call the other day from one of the boys, who was closest to her,
whose family al-.Ays said he had never married because Mrs. Welch was his lady
friend, and he did not need a younger one.
Besides the ~unday School Class, she became leader of the older men's group,
called the St. Andrew's Brotherhood. For a number of years it met at her home
once a month, with a party frequently for the wives and sweethearts. It was
quite remarkable, the way those middle-aged and elderly men hung on her words
when she talked of the Bible. She had such a fine collection of religious books
that it gave a good start to a young cler&)'Dlan w'en she died.