750 WELCH, BARTHOLOMEW T. 



damage was done to property. The rise in the 

 Shenandoah River, which was also very sud- 

 den, is reported to have been nearly fifty feet, 

 or twenty feet higher than during the great 

 flood of 1852. The destruction of property in 

 the counties of Rockingham, Shenandoah, Page, 

 Warren, Clarke, and Jefferson was very great, 

 including the entire crops of corn and hay, with 

 the unthreshed crops of wheat, rye, and oats, 

 along the river-bottoms. So suddenly {lid the 

 freshet come on that the people in the low- 

 lands did not have sufficient warning to pre- 

 serve their property; dwellings, mills, locks, 



WELCH, Rev. BARTHOLOMEW TEOW, D. D., 

 a Baptist clergyman of extraordinary eloquence 

 and earnestness, born in Boston, Mass., Sep- 

 tember 24, 1794; died at Newtonville, near 

 Albany, December 9, 1870. He was of Revo- 

 lutionary stock on both his father's and his 

 mother's side. He received his early educa- 

 tion in Boston, and at the age of seventeen 

 migrated to Philadelphia, where he acquired 

 the profession of an engineer, and labored at 

 it diligently till 1824. He had united with the 

 Baptist Church, under the care of Dr. Staugh- 

 ten, in 1815, and felt an inward drawing to the 

 work of the ministry, which, however, he re- 

 sisted till the Church called him to that office, 

 in 1824. After a brief missionary tour in 

 Western Pennsylvania, he was called, in 1825, 

 to the pastorate of Catskill, N. Y., and, in 1828, 

 he removed to Albany on the call of the First 

 Baptist Church of that city, and six years later 

 was transferred to the pastorate of the (new) 

 Pearl Street Church, with which he remained 

 till 1848. His reputation as a pulpit orator 

 was already high when he removed to Albany, 

 but it was wonderfully intensified during his 

 residence there. Thousands listened with as- 

 tonishment and delight to these bursts of elo- 

 quence, which carried all before them. Yet 

 these gems of oratory, so far as the form of 

 words went, though not in the thoughts they 

 embodied, were the result of the inspiration 

 of the moment. He left not more than half a 

 dozen sermons, and those not his finest, in 

 print, and he had no manuscript memoranda 

 from which he could afterward write them 

 out. He never wrote out a discourse. He 

 was, nevertheless, a hard student. The lead- 

 ing points of all his sermons (with occasional 

 exceptions) were carefully thought out; but 

 he always depended upon the inspiration of 

 the hour for the words in which to clothe 

 them. And no man ever had a more perfect 

 command of language. His diction was as 

 pure as his thoughts were grand, practical, 

 and poetic. It was always a marvel that a 

 man who had never enjoyed the advantages 

 of an early education could so readily and with 

 graceful ease always select the fittest words 



WEST VIRGINIA. 



bridges, fences, barns, and manufacturing 

 establishments were swept away, and hun- 

 dreds of laborers were deprived of employ- 

 ment. The loss of property by the flood is 

 estimated at not less than $5,000,000. 



Another calamity that may be mentioned 

 here was the burning of the Spottswood Hotel 

 in Richmond, on the morning of December 

 25th, the flames having been first discovered 

 about 2 o'clock, when most of the inmates 

 were asleep. Eight lives were lost, and many 

 persons were injured, while the loss of prop- 

 erty was about $300,000. 



for the most lucid expression of his grand ideas. 

 But, with the delivery of the sermon, the or- 

 der, the thought, and the words were lost, ex- 

 cept in the memory and hearts of his hearers. 

 There they lived, and live to-day, and will live- 

 forever, but only in the general truths which 

 they embodied, not in the words in which 

 those thoughts were clothed. In 1848 Dr. 

 Welch removed to Brooklyn, If. Y., and be- 

 came the pastor of the Pierrepont Street Bap- 

 tist Church. From a variety of causes, among 

 which might be named his declining health, 

 his ministry in Brooklyn, though fairly suc- 

 cessful, was not such a triumph over all ob- 

 stacles as that in Albany, and in 1854 he re- 

 turned to his old home, and ministered, till his 

 health entirely failed, to a small church in 

 Newtonville. The eloquence which once Avon 

 all hearts, and dazzled all minds by its brill- 

 iancy, now only gleamed out occasionally in 

 its wonted splendor ; but on great occasions 

 he was still himself. 



WEST VIRGINIA. This young State, em- 

 bracing fifty-three of the counties separated 

 from Virginia, numbers, according to the census 

 of 1870, little less than four hundred and fifty 

 thousand inhabitants. 



The most important question,, in a financial 

 point of view, before the State, relates to 

 the liquidation of her share in the debt which 

 burdened Virginia at the time of the separation 

 and in proportion to the number of citizens 

 as well as the value and extent of territory 

 severed from the old State. This obligation 

 was acknowledged on the formation of the 

 State, as appears from the ninth section of "An 

 Ordinance to provide for the formation of a 

 new State," passed on August 20, 1861, by the 

 convention for the reorganization of the Gov- 

 ernment of Virginia, then assembled at Wheel- 

 ing. In a report which the Second Auditor of 

 the State of Virginia has lately submitted to 

 the Legislature, the whole of her debt crea- 

 ted under acts prior to April 17, 1861, and, 

 therefore, subject to the said apportionment, is 

 set down at $37,250,830.02, including both 

 principal and interest reckoned up to January 

 31, 1870 





