Beloit - Asherville Township - Plum Creek Township
Mitchell County, Kansas 

               Beloit
first settlers  1866
incorporated    1870
first ancestor  1868
last ancestor   1932
# of ancestors    5
# of immigrants   0
# born in town    1
# died in town    3
The Welch family (1868-1932) 
                                         |-Horatio Nelson Welch
                 |-Charles Francis Welch-|
Minnie May Welch-|                       |-Abigail Heywood
                 |-Lucinda Dorothy Crowther

           

Charles Welch (1900)  Dorothy Welch (1901)  Minnie Welch (1900)  Charles Welch (ca 1912)
Three generations of the Welch family lived and died in Beloit, Kansas. The first settler in Beloit was A. A. Bell, who built a log cabin in 1868 and called it Willow Springs. On April 12, 1868, 200 Cheyenne raided the area and attacked the Bell-Bogardus cabin along the Solomon River a couple miles southeast of Willow Springs, killing 3 adults and 1 child. They raided other cabins along the river killing dozens. Mitchell County was formed in 1870, and the town of Beloit was platted in 1872 and renamed for Beloit, Wisconsin, home of town promoter T. F. Hersey.

CHARLES FRANCIS WELCH came here 3 years after he fought in the Civil War (see the chapter on Lunenburg). He came along with other New Hampshire men, including Benjamin F. Moody and Charles Langdon Brown. Moody was born in New Hampshire, while Brown lived in Stoddard, New Hampshire right before coming to Kansas, and would have been a neighbor of the Welch family in Stoddard. All three of them arrived in Mitchell County in 1868, Brown just after Thankskiving. I do not know if they traveled together; they were all about the same age, but Brown was the only one who was married. Welch and Moody took up adjacent homesteads, while Brown was on the same road 2 miles east. The farms here were long rectangles, 1/4 mile east-to-west and 1 mile north-to-south, so the settlers could live just 1/4 mile from each other to give them a sense of security. CHARLES was the census enumerator for the first census in Mitchell County in 1870. The census page for Asherville lists 13 people including himself, of which four were named Charles and 11 were men between the ages of 22 and 38.


The only reference to Charles Welch that I have found in any history books is the following quote from "History of the State of Kansas" by William G. Cutler, 1993:
"At the mouth of Marshall Creek the family of Abram Marshall, consisting of himself, wife, two grown sons and two daughters, were living and building a dam for the future improvement of the Solomon [River]. Two miles north, Charles Welch and B. F. Moody were building a dug-out and breaking prairie."

An 1884 atlas of Mitchell County shows the Marshall mill in Asherville, Section 31. Welch and Moody took out homestead patents in Beloit Township, Section 13, while Brown's homestead was in Asherville, Section 20. A county road can be seen running from section 13 in Beloit Township at an angle through Sections 17, 18, and 20 in Asherville. This road was called Hampshire street because of the settlers along the road from New Hampshire. Also along this road was Alonzo Pagett, who came here in 1874 from Iowa. He was the father of 3 sons including Roy Pagett, who married CHARLES WELCH's youngest daughter Grace.


1884 Mitchell County Atlas pages for City of Beloit, Plum Creek, Beloit, and Asherville Townships
Click here for complete atlas of Mitchell County, Kansas including town directories.

CHARLES married DOROTHY LUCINDA CROWTHER in 1873. She was born in Andover, Massachusetts, and lived in Yantic, Connecticut during the 1860s. Her older sister, Frances (Aunt French), married Charles F. Keables before he joined the army in 1862, and the couple lived in Yantic for the rest of the decade. In 1870, DOROTHY, Frances, and Charles Keables moved together to Manhattan, Kansas, where they are listed in the 1870 census. Manhattan was 75 miles east of Beloit and the nearest town of any size, comprising over 1000 people in 1870. Keables worked as a wagon maker, and no doubt had plenty of business as Manhattan was on some of the wagon-train routes such as the Smoky Hill trail. The Keables were also in the 1875 Manhattan census along with his brother, Amos and family. The two brothers were both listed as carriage makers. Then in 1877 Charles Keables went to Denver for a year where he worked as a carriage painter. The Keables were back in Manhattan in 1880 before they moved to Iowa by 1885. They lived in Iowa for about 35 years before moving to Beloit in 1919, where they lived on East Court Street, and Charles had a carriage painting shop on West Court Street. 
    
     Charles and Frances Keables    Roy and Grace Pagett

DOROTHY and CHARLES WELCH lived on the Welch homestead east of the town of Beloit. CHARLES was granted the patent for the land June 15, 1871, with the legal description of: "Southwest quarter of the Southeast quarter of Section twelve; the West half of the Northeast quarter and the Northwest quarter of the Southeast quarter of Section thirteen in township seven South of Range seven West." However he sold the property to his father, HORATIO WELCH of Stoddard New Hampshire for $1000 on May 25, 1870. This sale did not prevent him from taking out several mortages on the property (in the following list the last two mortgages were obtained by HORATIO rather than CHARLES): 
Feb 27, 1873  $300 for 1 year  at 12% per annum to C. L. Heywood of Boston
Nov  1, 1876  $700 for 5 years at 10% per annum to Andarsia F. Taylor of Maryland
Mar 25, 1879  $200 for 2 years at 12% per annum to Thomas Thompson of Iowa
Nov  1, 1881 $1300 for 3 years at  7% per annum to Phoenix Mutual Insurance Company of Hartford Connecticut
May  6, 1882 $112 for 6 months at 12% per annum to Bank of Beloit

The Charles F. Welch farm as it looks in 2018: photo on left looks south, photo on right looks west.

In 1872, a wooden school building was built on CHARLES' property, in a 1-acre parcel 256 feet by 160 feet just to the north of the road and along the west side of his farm. In 1883 he sold the land to the school district for $1, and they built a beautiful stone school which still exists. The stone was quaried from the "Old Sheahon Place" a quarter mile east of the school, and as it is made of limestone has embedded within it leaf and animal fossils. Many of Beloit's old buildings are built with limestone and have a yellowish color often with reddish brownish horizontal stripes about an inch thick.



District School #3, built in 1883 out of limestone quarried 1/4 mile east of here. Black-and-white photo taken 1907.

CHARLES and DOROTHY WELCH had two daughters: MINNIE MAY WELCH born October 19, 1874, and Grace born in 1881. In the 1875 Kansas census of Beloit Township, "C. F. Welch" was listed as a 36-yr-old farmer owning $2000 of real estate and $60 of personal property. Also in the family were 29-yr-old L. D. Welch, 1-month-old M. Welch, and 65-yr-old M. Crother. DOROTHY's mother must have come to see her new granddaughter. CHARLES' parents came to Kansas to live with them some time after 1875. His mother ABIGAIL died in Beloit on September 26, 1879. His father was still living with them in the 1880 census, but sometime before 1887, probably when the family moved to Denver in 1884, HORATIO moved back to Massachusetts where he lived with a nephew in Marlborough until his death.


"Glenrose Farm - Beloit, 1906 - Colts Minnie & John - Cow White Face"
Note that Grace's middle name was Glenrose

The WELCH family moved to Denver in 1884 after selling the farm to H. W. Lobdell. They were listed in the 1885 census for Arapaho County. CHARLES worked as a clerk for the B&M Railroad. They lived in three houses in one neighborhood before settling into their home at 506 Gray St. (later renamed to 3106 Wyandot St.). MINNIE started school in Beloit, as indicated in the census of 1880, probably in the school mentioned above, but most of her education would have been in Denver. She married JOHN D. CRAWFORD, who she met while teaching school in Steamboat Springs for one year. Her sister Grace married Roy Pagett on the same day. (Note that their aunts Francis Keables and Ellen Harrison also had a double wedding.) Grace would have been too small when they left Beloit to know who Roy was, but Roy moved to Denver and was working as a street railway conductor when they were married. They immediately moved back to Beloit, and lived on a farm in Plum Creek Township just north of Beloit. They returned to Denver in 1908 and lived there until Dorothy Welch died in 1911. They then returned to Beloit, and were joined in 1913 by Charles Welch. He died on their farm in 1914.
Elmwood Cemetery



CHAS. F. WELSH  |  CHAS F. KEABLES   | ROY T. PAGETT     
     CO. A.     |   dec 19, 1838     |    CORP.          
18 N.H. INF     |   feb 1, 1924      | 22 KANS. INF      
                | FRANCES his Wife   | JULY 22, 1876     
                |   dec 12, 1842     | April 19, 1938    
                |   feb 8, 1936                          

Click on the following links for obituaries:
Abigail (Heywood) Welch
Charles Francis Welch
Charles Francis Welch
Lucinda Dorothy (Crowther) Welch
Minnie May (Welch) Crawford
Grace and Roy Pagett had two sons. The family visited with MINNIE and her son JAMES every summer. Everybody but Grace and MINNIE prefered meeting in Steamboat; when they chose to meet in Beloit, JOHN CRAWFORD would usual make excuses that he needed to stay in Steamboat for his work. In the 1925 Kansas census the Pagetts were listed as living in Sugar Creek, Miami, Kansas. In 1929 they moved to 620 N. Hersey Ave. in Beloit, where his occupation listed in the 1930 census was hedge-picking. That house had an attic fire in 1931, and they moved to 415 E. Court St. in Beloit. (Aunt Frances Keables lived at 419 E. Court St., according to a letter she wrote in 1933.) MINNIE visited Grace often in Beloit. In September of 1931 she moved in with Grace, hoping the change in environment would help her health. It did not, and she died of breast cancer in January of 1932. So three generations of Welch ancesters died in Beloit.


"We Boys' bedroom is where the arrow points. Out sitting room is below it. It has a dandy big attic and basement"
"House faces west. Our new home #620 N. Hersey. 1929."

415 and 419 E. Court St on the left, 620 N. Hersey St on the right, in 2012
The following are photos taken in December of 2018 and show some of the buildings that the Welch and Pagett families would have seen.

Mitchell County Courthouse on left, vault room containing old deed books in middle, train depot on right
One of the early day school houses restored and moved to a park.


Future Mitchell County Historical Society buildings; round building in middle was the base of a water tower; building on right was for the stage


Old buildings in center of Beloit. The 2-story building in the last photo is the oldest building in town; the first church services were held on the second floor.
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