Since I sent you the first message, I've been doing my homework, and it paid off! I've got the mother of Hannah 100% and I also found the McClelland connection in that family! I highly doubot the paternal line is related to your Welches, however. I have conjured up quite a bit of detail on your family in the process, though, most of which you may already have. Here is my latest breakthrough: Hannah J. Welch was the daughter of ? Welch and Margaret ?. The father was ALMOST definately the son of Captain William Welch. Which son (out of the list of William's children) is still a mystery. Three sons stayed in Maryland, and the rest I don't have names for, and I don't know where they ended up. I live in a DC suburb, so I should have plenty of time to do that research in the near future. The father Welch and the mother Margaret came to either Franklin Township, Harrison County or some part of Tuscarawas County (I think the area is probably present day Franklin Township) and the father died shortly thereafter. They came to Ohio with their only child Hannah. After the father Welch died, Margaret married John DeLong, who was recently widowed himself and left with a huge family to take care of on his own. John & Margaret probably had one son named Nicodemus (but I've only found that name from someone else's family tree, so I haven't proven it yet). In the 1840s, John DeLong died, and Margaret ?/Welch/DeLong remarried Nicholas Wheeler II (son of Nicholas Wheeler & Drucilla Johnson). Around the same era, the daugher Hannah married John Peregoy Smith. At some point, John & Hannah bought a cemetery plot in Stock Township (Pleasant Valley). William Peregoy Smith and his wife were burried there (William was John's brother). Also, Hannah's mother Margaret was burried there, the grave reading Margaret Wheeler! The McClelland connection is through the Wheeler family. One of Nicholas' children (Hannah's stepbrother) married a McClelland. Hannah and her step-sister-in-law must have become very good friends, as Hannah gave one of her sons the middle name McClelland. Unfortunately, Hannah new very little about her father. Her family was unable to write anything about him in the biographical records in the county, except that they were a family of "Sterling Pioneers." In the 1880 census, she reports that her mother was born in Harford County, MD, but that she was unaware of her father's birth locale. I'll have to figure these details out for her! The father Welch must have purchased land in Ohio at some point, and he probably payed taxes a few years too. I already ordered the land records from the LDS library, and I know that all the tax records are in the basement of the Harrison County Genealogical Society. The maximum amount of time the Father Welch could have been alive in Harrison County was between 1825 and 1829 (the period between 1825 when Hannah was an infant, since we know she was born in Maryland and the parents would have likely not travelled in the first few months of her life in 1824, and 1829 when Hannah remarried John DeLong). Thanks for your help, and I hope this information can be useful, if for nothing less than weeding out a local Welch who is not related to any of the other Welch families in the area!