The Wellisch family has been traced back to about 1750, when they were living in the small Hungarian town of Rajka (Ragendorf) which is near Moson (Wieselburg). In the middle of the nineteenth century, Salomon Wellisch, great grandfather of Emil and Hugo, moved with his family of nine children to nearby Moson. This place is now called Mosonmagyarovar. Adolf, grandson of Salomon, was born in 1848. He worked as a cooper,  and moved around the Austro-Hungarian empire, eventually settling around 1890 in Vienna.