Martin Welker

    (1819-1902)

   Martin Welker was a well respected person in the legal and political life of Ohio during the 19th century. He was born in a log cabin in Knox County, Ohio, in 1819. He attended the common schools and as a young man, he studied law.

   He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and set up a practice in Millersburg, Ohio. From 1846 to 1851 Welker served as clerk of the common pleas court of Holmes County. He was Judge of the Sixth Ohio District Court from 1852 to 1857, and in the following years he held many appointed and elected offices in state and federal government, including Ohio Lieutenant Governor, from 1857-1858.

   Welker served in the Civil War from 1861-1865. From 1873 to 1890 he taught political science and international law at Wooster College. He died in 1902.

   Martin Welker is included as a writer by his having published a significant Ohio book, inspired by his early life in Knox County:

Farm Life in Central Ohio Sixty Years Ago. 1892.