Notes for: Ethelbert David Bond

BURNING OF THE TOWN OF WEST UNION.
On the night of March 27th, 1858, the fire fiend once more visited West Union, and this time laid the town in ashes. At the time many of the citizens were absent at Clarksburg, attending the United States court, then in session in that city. The fire originated in an upper room of the residence of L.R. Charter. A brisk gale was blowing and the flames spread rapidly to other buildings, the first being the large hotel and store room belonging to James A. Foley. Then followed the residence of Ethelbert Bond and the storehouse of Arthur Ingram. Many other buildings shared the same fate, and the next morning, what the evening before had been the town of West Union, was but a mass of smoldering ruins. But just at the time the Parkersburg and Grafton branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railway was completed, and the town, phoenix-like, arose from its own ashes, and in a short time no traces of the holocaust remained behind.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvpioneers/doddridgecountyhistory.html
Hardesty’s 1883 History of Doddridge County