Seth Grosvenor Dunbar

Seth Grosvenor Dunbar was born in 1837 in Maine (the GEDCOM gives 7 October 1836, in Kennebec County) — but he did not come to West Virginia alone or for the war, as this archive once supposed. The Wildermuth & Bain book settles it: Seth’s father, John V. Dunbar, a steam-mill owner, moved the whole family from Readfield, Kennebec County, Maine to Bull Run in Wood County, (West) Virginia between the 1850 and 1860 censuses. Seth was a boy of about thirteen to twenty-three during that relocation, one of John and Ann Dunbar’s nine children. That family move — not an individual Civil-War migration — is why the Dunbars had become, in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s memory, an established Wood County family, even though their origin was in New England.

By Martha Kelley (b. 1844, Barbour County, then Virginia), Seth had a daughter, Verona Belle Dunbar, born 11 June 1869 in Wood County. The book is explicit that Seth and Martha never married — Verona was born out of wedlock and was raised by Martha’s sister Deborah (Kelley) Sheppard. Seth died 26 October 1870, age thirty-four, when Verona was sixteen months old.

His burial is in Wood County. His Maine-side family is now recovered: his parents were John V. Dunbar (b. ca 1804, d. 22 Nov 1884 at Parkersburg) and Ann Dunbar (b. 1812), and his eight siblings were Vernum Augusteen, Josephine, Virginia, James, George, Mary, Abbee, and Thomas Dunbar. The generations above John and Ann, back in Maine, remain open.

Did Seth have a wife?

Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1998 pedigree chart says something this archive has never held. It gives Seth as married 29 December 1860 in Wood County, Virginia, and puts Sarah J. Henry (b. 1841, Jefferson County, Ohio; d. Wood County, W.Va.) in the slot for Verona Belle’s mother. Martha Kelley does not appear on the sheet at all.

This archive is not changing Verona’s parentage. The Wildermuth & Bain book is far better sourced — it works from censuses, states outright that Seth and Martha never married, and explains the Sheppard surname through Martha’s sister Deborah (Kelley) Sheppard, who raised the child. A pedigree chart with two unsourced lines does not overturn that.

But the likeliest reading is that both are true and neither source is wrong. Pedigree software has one box for “mother” and one for “spouse,” and where a man’s wife and his child’s mother are different women, the wife is exactly what gets printed. On that reading:

• Sarah J. Henry was Seth’s wife, married December 1860 — a woman this archive had never heard of, and a real gap in his life story.
• Martha Kelley was Verona’s mother, unmarried, in 1869 — as the book says.

Which would mean Verona was born to Seth during his marriage to someone else, and that the Kelleys took her in. It would also explain why the Sheppards, and not the Dunbars, raised her.

The Wood County marriage record for 29 December 1860 would settle it. Until someone reads it, Sarah J. Henry is recorded here as a name from one chart and nothing more — she is deliberately not given a page.

Sources: Wildermuth Family of Marietta, Ohio (Wildermuth & Bain), the Dunbar register entries, pp. 108–109 (family relocation Maine → Wood County; “never married Martha Kelley”); Eesley/Wildermuth GEDCOM tree — Dale Eesley / FamilySearch, sync 1 June 2026.