Ed Welch explores his Cherokee roots
ISLAND NOTEBOOK by Ira Philip
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Ancestral heritage: Edward (Ed) Welch is seen close up with pictures of his Cherokee ancestors.
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While much has been written about St. David's Islanders reconnecting with their Native American kin emanating from the Pequot Tribe, little has been researched or documented about those Bermudians who are rooted with the Cherokee Tribe.
Edward (Ed) Welch, a singer, boat builder and fisherman of GateHead Lane, Smith's Parish, has been diligently researching his Cherokee roots and had his efforts substantially rewarded with an unexpected batch of carefully annotated photographs and documents from abroad.
Additionally, he has been supported by a group of ten young Bermuda women, half of them of Portuguese ancestry and Cherokee roots. They have been meeting recently planning a local Cherokee reumion next year.
Ed, who celebrated his 79th birthday November 2, had absolutely no inkling of his North American ancestry until he was in his early 20s. He had been on a concert tour to New York with a male voice choir from St. John's AME Church, Bailey's Bay. A former accompanist of the legendary American singer Marion Anderson happened to be in the audience when the choir was performing in the Abyssinia Baptist Church.
He noted an extraordinary quality about young Welsh's tenor voice, and offered him a scholarship to develop his potential at the Julliard School of Music which he accepted. Before going to Julliard, Ed felt the need to attend a prep school in New York. He stayed with an elderly aunt, Blanche Gibbons Lightbourne, who had left Bermuda as a young girl in the early 1900s.
It was Blanche who literally blew his mind when she told him about his Cherokee roots; and that he was a direct descendant of a beautiful Cherokee Native American Indian slave named Jane Bernice Walburne.
Somehow or the other Jane Bernice had ended up in Bermuda. Her marriage certificate shows she became the wife of Robert Gibbons, a white Bermudian, in 1843 at St. John's Pembroke Parish Church. According to Ed, research has shown the (Gibbons) surname comes from Mayo, Ireland.
The Jane Bernice Walburne and Robert Gibbons union produced four daughters and four sons. Through various inter-racial marriages they began what Welch fondly calls "The Rainbow Group". The four girls all married Outerbridges from Bailey's Bay.
He (Ed Welch) is the son of Amy Averil Bernice Gibbons. She was the youngest of 12 children born to Lester Walburne Gibbons who was one of the four sons of Bernice Walburne.
Not unlike their cousins who descended from the Irish side of the Gibbons family, the Walburnes made significant contributions to Bermuda (or Welburnes), in both the arts and crafts, the professions including more than 25 school teachers including Miss Carol Hill; clergy at home in Bermuda and abroad, and noted historian Cyril Packwood, author of Chained on the Rock, best seller of his four books.
