Mrs Charles Welman
(1817-1887)
29 May 1863

Volume 10, page 253, sitting number 13,380. 

Born on 2 January 1817 at Faithlegg in County Waterford, Ireland, Anne Eliza Bolton was the eldest daughter of Cornelius Henry Bolton. During her life her name Anne became Annette and Elizabeth became Eliza and various combinations of these four names appear on official sources. 

On 1 May 1835 at Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire she married Charles Noel Welman of Pitminster in Somerset. Their marriage produced six sons, although their first son died in childhood, and six daughters. 

Mrs Welman appears on the 1851 census living at Norton Manor in Norton Fitzwarren, Somerset.

She was at the same address in 1881 when her husband described himself as ‘JP for Somerset and Dept. Lieut.’ for the county. Also present that night were their son Gerard and three unmarried daughters, as well as a butler, a footman and five female servants. Mary, a twelve-year old granddaughter, was a visitor. 

Mrs Welman died, aged 70, on 1 May 1887 at Clevedon, a seaside resort in North Somerset. 

‘MRS NOEL WELMAN — The deceased lady was Annette Eliza, daughter of the late Cornelius Henry Bolton, Esq., of Faithless House, co. Waterford, and married, in 1835, Charles Noel Welman, Esq., of Norton Manor, Somerset, and formerly captain Somerset Yeomanry Cavalry, by whom she has left a family’ (The Queen, 7 May 1887). 

She was buried in St Mary’s Churchyard at Taunton in Somerset, following a requiem mass at the local Roman Catholic church, said by the Reverend Father O’Meara. 

Originally a non-conformist Protestant, Charles Welman had converted to Catholicism some thirty years ago, ‘probably through the influence of his wife’ (Taunton Courier, 14 January 1950).  

‘CONVERSION — On Sunday last, at St George’s, Taunton, Charles Noel Welman, Esq., nephew to Lord Gainsborough, and to the Rev. Baptist Noel, openly abjured the errors of Protestantism and publicly professed his belief in the doctrine and teaching of the Holy Catholic Church’ (Limerick and Clare Examiner, 10 July 1852). One of his daughters became a nun. 

'Charles Noel Welman, JP and DL for Somerset, late of Norton Manor, Taunton' died on 7 June 1907' in his 93rd year 'at Southernleigh, Esplanade-road, Minehead' (West Somerset Free Press, 15 June 1907. Elswhere in the same issue, there is an obituary and a detailed account of Mr Welman's funeral).