Welder Ranch stands on the original homesite and Mexican land grant of Don Felipe Roque de la Portilla and his wife Maria Ignacia de la Garza. Felipe Roque de la Portilla was a Spanish empresario in Texas from 1807 to 1812, a forerunner of Stephen F. Austin, and founder of San Marcos de Neve in 1807. He joined the Irish Colony of Col. James Power and James Hewetson in 1828 and received a Mexican land grant at this site in 1834. His daughter Maria Dolores de la Portilla married Col. James Power in 1832, and they had two children, James Power, Jr., born in 1833, and Dolores Power, born in 1835, who later became the wife of John Welder. After the death of Dolores in 1836, Col. James Power married Maria Tomasa de la Portilla, the second daughter of Felipe Roque de la Portilla, and they had five children. From 1833 to 1850, this was the ranch of John Welder and his wife Dolores Power, daughter of Col. James Power and Dolores de la Portilla Power. Col. James Power was an empresario and soldier and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. John Welder came to America from Bavaria with his father Franz Welder in 1830 and landed at Copano in 1833 with Dr. Beales Rio Grande Colony. The oldest son of John Welder and his wife Dolores Power, John J. Welder, married Eliza Hughes, daughter of Patrick Hughes, who came from Ireland to Texas in 1852. John J. Welder was a captain in the Confederate Army, and his wife Elizabeth Traylor was the daughter of Winn Traylor, recipient of a Texas land grant in 1840. The land remained owned and ranched by their descendants.