Pioneer Families of Grand Traverse County, Michigan

Ernest Garfield Welborn was born 11 July 1880 in Indiana, son of John Alva Welborn and Alice Ann Connor. At the age of one he moved from Indiana with his family to Garfield township. He was married on 20 May 1903 in Grand Traverse County, Michigan to Jennie Blanche Cole. Blanche was born 27 July 1877, the daughter of Isaiah J and Clara Kreps Cole. Ernest and Blanche lived on a farm on North Long Lake Road, building the stone house that currently stands there.

Family stories indicate that Blanche was not a pleasant person. She beat her daughter Alice regularly so that Alice arrived at school bearing black and blue marks. She also supposedly refused to allow her husband to read indoors, Ernest took books out to the barn to read. Prior to her marriage, Blanche had worked as a teacher.

Blanche died 9 August 1932 in Traverse City, her cause of death being listed as "jaundice". Ernest suffered from tuberculosis and pneumonia and died 5 February 1937 after "weeks illness". Both are buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Traverse City.

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