Winona H. Welch papers

Winona H. Welch (1896-1990) was a bryologist, specializing in Fontinalaceae and later, the Hookeriaceae at DePauw University, Greencastle Indiana. Welch and Truman G. Yuncker were responsible for the development of the herbarium at DePauw. In 1987, Welch donated that herbarium, which she had named the Truman Yuncker Herbarium on his death in 1964 to the New York Botanical Garden in 1987. On the occasion of her 92nd birthday, a Winona H. Welch Festschrift was published in Brittonia 40 (2), 5 May, 1988.

Winona Welch was born on a farm in Jasper County, Indiana, three miles northeast of the town of Goodland. She had decided to go to DePauw as a child because she liked the name.

But first she had to earn the money. She went for teacher training to Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute and the College at Winona Lake, Indiana. She taught at the Wildasin, Hancock and Brook public schools during World War I.

In 1919, she entered the freshman class of DePauw. She wanted to major in chemistry but was discouraged from doing so by the head of the department. She turned to biology and from there a concentration in botany under Truman G. Yuncker. As his assistant in the herbarium, she helped mount 4000 specimens collected by Earl Grimes from an area around Russellville, IN.

Yuncker encouraged her to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois where she studied plant taxonomy under William Trelease and plant ecology under W.B. MacDougall. Her masters thesis was an enumeration of the plants in her home, Jasper County.

Dr. Welch began to specialize in bryophytes, she says, because she felt sorry for them--they were being studied less frequently than the vascular plants. She was given a major bryophyte research project by Charles Deam, the noted Indiana botanist. He invited her to produce a volume on mosses to accompany his Flora of Indiana. This was not published until 1957.

She received her Ph.D. in 1928 from Indiana University. Her dissertation was a study of the growth of Vaccinium in the limestone soil of Monroe County, a sponsored fellowship. After spending the next two years at I.U. T.G. Yuncker invited her to return to DePauw as an assistant professor of botany.

She stayed in Greencastle for the rest of her life. Her association with Truman Yuncker extended past the Botany Dept. and Welch effectively became a member of the Yuncker family. The Yuncker daughters, Betty-Jane and Barbara, remembered Welch as a kindly aunt who babysat them over the years and accompanied the family on vacations and field collections.

At DePauw, the team of Yuncker and Welch developed the herbarium founded by Lucien Underwood in 1891. Welch was curator of the Cryptogamic Herbarium while Yuncker concentrated on the vascular plants. By the time it was turned over to NYBG it had grown to 133, 500 collections and was termed "the most significant acquisition made by the Garden since 1945".

Welch was considered one of the outstanding teachers at DePauw, inspiring her students to love nature. She taught comparative morphology and evolution, histology and microtechnique, some systematics, ecology, mycology, plant pathology and laboratory sections of general botany. She was made a full professor in 1939. In 1956 when Yuncker retired from teaching, she was named department head. When Yuncker died in 1964 and Welch was named curator of the Herbarium, she named it in his honor. She served from 1964-1981 and as Curator Emeritus from 1981-1987. It was Welch who contacted the NYBG when she realized that DePauw would be unable to allocated resources to maintain and expand their lifework.

Welch showed the same grace and equanimity over the delayed publication of her monographs on Indiana Mosses and the Fontinalaceae. Although her first work on Fontinalaceae was published in A.J. Grout's 1934 Moss Flora of North America North of Mexico and the entire monograph was complete by 1949, it had to wait until 1960 when a grant from the National Science Foundation supplied enough money to subsidize its publication. It is considered one of the best monographs ever written in bryology. Likewise the Indiana Mosses, although completed in 1930's did not appear until 1957.

Aside from her teaching and research, Welch was an active participant in professional and social organizations. She was a charter member of the American and International Societies of Plant Taxonomists and held every executive office of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society among the many world's scientific organizations to which she belonged. In Greencastle, she belonged to the Daughters of the American Revolution, Professional Women's Club and attended the Women's Club with Mrs. Yuncker.

No biography of Winona Welch is complete without mention of her deep religious faith. This sustained her from her childhood and she was an active member of the Presbyterian Church in Greencastle. During her retirement she organized a bible class at the retirement community where she lived with her sister.

As a woman scientist, Welch held her share of firsts; first woman head of a department at DePauw and first woman President of the Indiana Academy of Science among them.

She was also active in the conservation field. In 1969 an area in Putnam County, IN was named the Winona Welch Botanical Area to honor her contributions.

Although she lived her whole life in Indiana, she collected in all 50 states, almost all of the provinces of Canada, Panama, the West Indies and in the South Pacific. In 1938 she spent six months in European herbariums studying Fontinalaceae for her monograph. She was an active participant in bryological forays where she met scientists such as Howard Crum, William Steere, George Nichols, Margaret Fulford, the Dailys, Lewis Anderson and dozens more--all of whom became life long friends.

Her last years were spent in a retirement community, Asbury Towers, overlooking the DePauw campus. It was there that her many friends feted her life and work on the publication of the Brittonia Festschrift. She died on January 16, 1990.