California Biographies Mendocino and Lake Counties, California Transcribed by Peggy Hooper This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm Source: History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California With Biographical Sketches History by Aurelius O. Carpenter And Percy H. Millberry Illustrated, Complete In One Volume Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1914 WALTER SCOTT DUNBAR.� Very early in the colonization of America members of the Dunbar family came hither from Dumbarton, Scotland, and settled on the rockbound coast of Maine, where later genera- tions lived and labored with sturdy fortitude of endurance. In the genera- tion following Dunbar Joseph Dunbar, who lived to be more than eighty Years of age, was Joseph C. Dunbar, a skilled carpenter well known in Lincoln county, where he had many contracts for the erection of large and permanent buildings. Not a few of these stand to the present day, memorials to his skill and honest workmanship. When seventy-two years of age he put aside the tools of his craft and entered into the rest of eternity. During young manhood he had married Mercy Ann Glidden, who was a lifelong resident of Maine, dying there at the age of sixty years. Her father, a man of remarkable strength, able to do a full day's work after he was eighty years of age, became very deaf in his later years and on one occasion, not hearing the passing engine, was struck and killed on a railroad near his home. Longevity had characterized previous generations, his father having lived to be almost one hundred and having cast his last vote for John C. Fremont for president. One of the vivid memories of the childhood of Walter Scott Dunbar is that of sitting on the knees of this aged man, his great-grandfather, who would entertain him with tales of his service in the Revolutionary war and his acquaintance with George Washington. Had it been possible to record these stories much interesting history concerning the Revolution would have been saved for future generations. The family of Joseph C. Dunbar consisted of ten children, of whom the first-born, Joseph Roscoe, died at Baltimore in December, 1862, while serving in the army. The second, Mercy Augusta, married M. V. B. Knowlton, a ship caulker, of Belfast, Me., where she died in 1872. The third, Walter Scott, was born at Nobleboro, Lincoln county, Me., March 14, 1842, and since 1908 has lived on Sixth street, in Lakeport, Cal. Of his life and thrilling war experiences mention is made in the following paragraph. The fourth child, Harlow E., was killed in 1864 in front of Petersburg during the siege at that point. The fifth child, Lewis W., went through the entire period of the war uninjured, but afterward came out to the Pacific coast and was killed by a snowslide in Nevada. The sixth child, Bion B., of Eugene, Ore., is a carpen- ter by trade. Laura, who never married, died in 1879. Meaubec M., a quartz miner and prospector, died at Aspen, Colo., about 1900. The youngest daughter, Esther, never married and remained throughout life at the old homestead in Maine. The youngest of the ten children, Owen L., now a foreman in one of the Spreckels sugar factories near Salinas, has been en- gaged in the sugar business for about one-quarter of a century. Owing to the poverty of the parents and the necessity for self-support at an early age, it was impossible for Walter Scott Dunbar to attend school more than three months each year of his boyhood, yet he secured a fair rudi- mentary education, which later was expanded by travel, reading and observa- tion. During the spring of 1862 he enlisted in Company K, Sixteenth Maine Infantry, assigned to the army of the Potomac. His initiation into battle occurred at Antietam, after which he fought at Fredericksburg in December, 1862, and at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. When the battle of Gettys- burg opened on the 1st of July, 1863. the Reynolds Corps began the charge, and as a member of its second division he was in the very front of the memor- able engagement, where he fought for three days and nights in the brunt of the storm of shot and shell. After the final charge he joined his corps in the pursuit of the opposing forces, whom he followed down into Maryland and Virginia. In all of this fighting he never received a scratch. His closest call occurred when a minie ball cut the strap of his haversack. After crossing the Rapidan river at Mine Run he went into camp there for the winter of 1863-64. During the spring of 1864 he fought throughout the entire battle of the Wilderness. On the 10th of May, at Laurel Hill, in a charge he was struck in the left side by a piece of shell, which caused an ugly wound and forced him to go to the hospital. Upon recovering he returned to his regiment just before the attack on Petersburg, having missed the engagements at Spottslyvania, Cold Harbor and North Anna. Winter quarters were estab- lished at Petersburg for the winter of 1864-65, and on the 5th of February they fought the battle of Hatchie's Run, where he was taken prisoner. About the middle of March he was paroled and the morning after the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox he succeeded in rejoining his regiment. Ordered to Washington, he took part in the grand review June 5, 1865, and was then honorably discharged, although he did not receive his final pay until after his return to Maine. On the morning of the 4th of July, 1865. Mr. Dunbar left his native place in Maine and started out for Colorado, making the trip principally by wagon and landing at Denver on the 1st of September. For thirty-five or more years he engaged in placer mining in the west, meanwhile buying property at Canon City, Colo., where he lived for a number of years. His marriage in 1895 united him with Miss Edith L. Tawney, of Esbon, Kan., by whom he is the father of one child, Thelma I., now a student (1914') in the Lakeport union high school. From 1902 until 1908 the family lived in Washington near the city of Olympia, but in the latter year they came to Lakeport, where Mr. Dunbar bought two lots on the corner of Sixth and Mansanito streets and erected the little cottage that makes a comfortable home for the family. Since coming here he has identified himself with the Grand Army of the Republic at Upper Lake. In politics he always has been stanch in his support of the Republican party. While not connected with any denomination, he is in sympathy with religious work, and his wife and daughter hold membership with the Metho- dist Episcopal Church of Lakeport.