In the 16th and 17th centuries people called Weld and living in Cheshire began to travel and to settle in the environs of London, in Shropshire, in Suffolk and thence in the American Colonies, and in Dorset.

[5][6] Weld settled in Holdwell, Hertfordshire and became a City of London merchant and a member of the Worshipful Company of Grocers.

A merchant, and a charter member and Council assistant of the Newfoundland Company of 1610, he founded the Weld Chapel in Edmonton, London.

On coming of age he was the fourth generation of Welds to take charge of the vast estate with its portion of the magnificent Jurassic Coast (today a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

He was succeeded by his eldest son and heir, Edward Weld (1740–1775), briefly the first husband of Maria Fitzherbert, before being fatally injured in a riding accident.

[29] He married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Sir William Romney (died 1611[30]), Alderman of London,[31] at St Martin Pomary on 4 February 1610/11.

He died childless and left his estate to a cousin, Cecil Forester and thus the Weld blood line became extinguished in Shropshire.

However, the Weld name continued by royal licence granted to Forester in 1811 as a condition of the inheritance of the Willey estate.

Having been elected MP for Much Wenlock in 1790, a seat he held till 1820, [37] he was subsequently raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom as Baron Weld-Forester, of Willey Park in the County of Shropshire.

In the first days of the British colonization of the Americas, three sons of Edmund Weld (1559–1608)[40] of Sudbury, Suffolk, England arrived in Boston.

[40][dead link‍] As an award for his participation in the Pequot War of 1637 and subsequent negotiations, the colonial legislature granted Weld 278 acres (1.13 km2) in the town of Roxbury.

With the wealth generated from this grant, Joseph Weld became one of the first donors to Harvard and a founder of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.

Other descendants of John Weld moved on to develop the valley of Sawmill Brook near Dedham as the Williams Farm.

Weld Hill was selected by George Washington as a rallying point for the patriot army to fall back upon in case of disaster.

[41] After Eleazer Weld's death in 1800, much of his land along the Roslindale and Jamaica Plain border went to fellow patriot Benjamin Bussey and was subsequently bequeathed to Harvard, becoming the basis for Arnold Arboretum.

William Gordon Weld (1775–1825), Eleazer's fifth son, founded a fleet of trading vessels that brought more wealth back from China.

Isaac Weld (1774–1856) was an Irish topographical writer, explorer, and artist and member of the Royal Dublin Society, for whom he wrote the Statistical Survey of Co. Roscommon.

Isaac's great-great-grandfather, reverend Edmund Weld of Blarney Castle, County Cork, Ireland (1655), lived during Cromwell's time.