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) 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.

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.