Background
John Welsh was born in Philadelphia, Pa. , the son of John and Jemima (Maris) Welsh. His father was a successful merchant who trained his sons to follow in his footsteps.
John Welsh was born in Philadelphia, Pa. , the son of John and Jemima (Maris) Welsh. His father was a successful merchant who trained his sons to follow in his footsteps.
While John's brothers established a firm of their own, he became a partner in Dulles, Wilcox & Welsh, dealing in dry goods. After the death of his father in 1854, Welsh joined his brothers in the family West India trade, which was concerned largely with sugar. Absorption in business was not complete, and he became interested in Philadelphia affairs. He was a member of the select council from 1855 to 1857 and member and chairman of the city sinking fund commission from 1857 to 1871. He was much interested in developing the Fairmount Park system, and, after successful leadership in the fight to persuade the city government to take on an enlarged plan, he became a member of the Fairmount Park Commission in 1867 and served until his death. Railroads and banks were also within the scope of his interest, and he was president of the North Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1864 he organized a great sanitary fair for war charities in Philadelphia, but his crowning achievement was his management of the finances of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. This project started under the handicap of much hostility and the gloom of the panic of 1873; its success made his reputation. When the labor was over, his friends gathered a purse of $50, 000 to be presented to him to provide a public memorial of his achievement. He was a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania at this time, and he turned over this gift to establish the John Welsh Centennial Professorship of History and English Literature. After Hayes was elected president, he and Evarts thought that Pennsylvania was entitled to the British mission and let it be known to Senator J. Donald Cameron that, if the Pennsylvanians in Congress could come to some agreement as to a man, he would be appointed. Cameron thereupon commanded an endorsement of his father, Simon Cameron. The very next day a majority of the delegation came to Hayes and said they had been coerced. Hayes was perplexed, but opportunely there came a committee of Philadelphia businessmen proposing Welsh for the position. Hayes was delighted to have a blameless Pennsylvanian at his disposal and, without consulting Cameron, sent his name to the Senate. Cameron was nonplussed; but Welsh was above reproach, and Hayes had his way. Welsh spent a part of two years in London. Also he lost a brother and two sisters while away, and in May 1879 he asked to be recalled. His diplomatic experience was confined to paying the British government the $5, 500, 000 fisheries award, arranging rather ineptly for an international bimetallic conference, and obtaining the release of an American Fenian from prison.
He was a vestryman in St. Peter's Protestant Episcopal Church and was very active in the affairs of the Episcopal hospital.
His tall figure and benign countenance framed in large white whiskers made him resemble English nobility, and he was a social success; but he was old and the English climate brought bronchitis each winter.
He married Rebecca B. Miller on April 30, 1829. She died in 1832. On Feburary 6, 1838, he married Mary Lowber.