The Walch Migration to Kansas

During the 1870s the four older Walch children married and began raising families in New York. In the late 1870s, James and Margaret moved with their families to Kansas along with William and Isaac. Their mother, Elizabeth (Charnock) Walch, stayed in New York as did her daughter Lizzie and son John. In 1800, Elizabeth, then a widow, continued to live in her home in Hastings-on-Hudson with their daughter Lizzie and family. John Walch was working and living in Yonkers, but he too would eventually migrate to Kansas.

As the second generations of Walchs take their separate life paths we will follow each in the order of their birth. Elizabeth (Charnock) Walch’s later life will be included in the story of her daughter Lizzie, for the two were deeply entwined.

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My grandfather Stephen Fletcher Walch used to say that three Walch brothers came to Kansas together. As a youth I had a romantic notion that they rode horses to get there, looking much like the Ponderosa brothers. But in actuality, they took the train just as James Walch did, who is the subject of our first story.

James Walch’s migration and early settlement in Kansas was chronicled in a Winfield Courier news article. His great-granddaughter Mary Louise Mackensen has an undated clipping of it. While I did not read the article, her daughter Cait (Hendron) Sullivan of Phoenix, Arizona gave a summary of it:

In 1878 James Walch, who was called Jimmie, left his wife and baby daughter in New York and took the train to Wichita, Kansas, where the railway ended. He slung a bag of stone cutting tools over his shoulder and walked 60 miles southwest to Caldwell to see his sister Margaret. After a brief visit with Margaret and her family, he walked 47 miles north east to Winfield. On the way Jimmie was given a nights stay by a farm couple. The next morning after breakfast Jimmie dressed a stone for the home’s front door in repayment. Once he found work and housing in Winfield, Jimmie sent for his wife and daughter who took a train to Wichita and a stagecoach to Winfield to join him.

Jimmie became a pioneer stonecutter in Winfield, as we shall soon read. He was also widely called “Uncle Jimmie,” possibly because of his avuncular manner. But, it may have started with his role as the Walch family patriarch in Kansas. The widows of two of his brothers moved their families to Winfield, where Jimmie was quite literally an uncle and likely a surrogate father to many nieces and nephews living there. Although he was the oldest, Jimmie outlived all his brothers and sisters by many years. His obituary, which we will read next, gives us a glimpse into this remarkable man's life.

The photo of the James Walch family courtesy of Cait (Hendron) Sullivan.