Representative Richard Joseph Welch

Richard Joseph Welch (February 13, 1869 – September 10, 1949) was an American county clerk and Republican politician who represented California in the United States House of Representatives from the mid-1920s until his death in 1949. Over the course of a long public career, he served as a state senator, harbormaster of San Francisco, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and a thirteen-term member of Congress. As of 2025, he is the last Republican to represent San Francisco in the House of Representatives.

Welch was born in Monroe County, New York, on February 13, 1869, and was educated in the public schools. In his early boyhood he moved with his family to California and settled in San Francisco. As a young man he worked on a farm in Freeport, California, before entering a trade as an ironworker apprentice, training as a machinist. These early experiences in manual and industrial labor preceded his entry into public service and shaped his familiarity with working-class concerns in the rapidly developing economy of the late nineteenth century.

Welch’s first significant public position was in the local court system, where he served as clerk of the San Francisco County Superior Court. At the same time, he became active in Republican Party politics in San Francisco. He served as treasurer of his local Republican Club and helped organize campaign events for the national Republican ticket of William McKinley and Garret A. Hobart during the 1896 presidential campaign. In 1898 he helped organize San Francisco’s Dewey Republican Club, further establishing himself as a party organizer and local political figure.

Building on this party work, Welch was elected to the California State Senate, where he served from 1901 to 1913. During this twelve-year tenure in the state legislature, he participated in the lawmaking process at a time when California was undergoing rapid growth and political change. Concurrently with his state legislative career, he held executive responsibilities related to maritime commerce, serving as harbormaster for the port of San Francisco from 1903 to 1907. His work as harbormaster placed him at the center of one of the Pacific Coast’s most important ports during a period of expanding trade and urban development.

After leaving the state senate, Welch continued his involvement in municipal government. He was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, on which he served from 1916 until September 30, 1926. As a supervisor, he took part in overseeing city governance and public works during the post–World War I era and the early 1920s. He resigned his seat on the Board of Supervisors in 1926 after winning election to the United States Congress, marking his transition from local and state politics to the national legislative arena.

Welch entered the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican from a San Francisco–based district. According to existing accounts, he served as a Representative from California from 1925 to 1951, contributing to the legislative process during thirteen terms in office. Contemporary congressional records specify that he was elected to the Sixty-ninth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative Lawrence J. Flaherty and took his seat on August 31, 1926. He was then re-elected to the Seventieth and to the eleven succeeding Congresses, sitting in the House for twelve full terms from 1926 to 1949. Throughout this period he represented the interests of his San Francisco constituents during a significant era in American history that encompassed the late 1920s, the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, and the immediate postwar years.

During his long congressional service, Welch held important committee assignments and leadership roles. He served as chairman of the House Committee on Labor during the Seventy-first Congress, giving him a central role in deliberations over labor policy at the outset of the Great Depression. Later, in the Eightieth Congress, he chaired the Committee on Public Lands, overseeing legislation related to federal lands and natural resources in the early postwar period. His legislative record included the introduction of restrictive immigration legislation, notably a measure to exclude Filipinos from immigrating to the United States, reflecting the nativist and imperial-era attitudes that influenced immigration policy debates of his time.

Richard Joseph Welch died in office on September 10, 1949, at the age of 80, in a hospital in Needles, California, while still serving in the United States House of Representatives. His death brought to a close more than two decades of continuous service in Congress. He was succeeded in the House by John F. Shelley, a Democrat, and no Republican has since represented San Francisco in the House of Representatives. Welch’s body was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California, marking the final resting place of a figure who had been active in California public life from the turn of the twentieth century through the mid-century transformation of American politics and society.