Tag: Taylor County

April 18, 1849: State Supreme Court Justice Marmaduke Dent Born

Marmaduke Dent was born at Granville in Monongalia County on April 18, 1849. During his childhood, the nation was descending into the Civil War.

His father, Marshall Mortimer Dent, as editor of Morgantown’s Virginia Weekly Star newspaper, favored compromise to save the Union, and, as a delegate to the Virginia secession convention, voted against secession.

In 1867, Marmaduke Dent enrolled in West Virginia University’s first class and received the school’s first B.A. and M.A. degrees. He became a teacher in Taylor County, where he was also a deputy clerk and notary public. In 1875, he started a legal practice in Grafton, where he also served on the city council, as town clerk, and on the school board.

From 1893 to 1905, Dent was a justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court. As a Democratic-Populist, he declared war on railroads and other corporations but, as a minority of one on the court, generally fell on the losing side in most cases.

After being defeated for reelection in 1904, Marmaduke Dent retired to Grafton, where he died in 1909 at age 60.

They Are Trying To Change The World–One Basement System At A Time

It’s dark. It’s damp. It’s your basement, or crawl space. And for some people in Clarksburg, it’s a labor of love to go down there and find ways to improve energy efficiency.

Basement Systems of West Virginia does work to improve the energy efficiency of homes by encapsulating crawl spaces. That means they take materials, similar to pool liner, and other things to create what they call “clean spaces.”

It’s their hope to improve conditioning and energy efficiency in these dim, dark places.

“We live in a day and age when environmental issues are very important, people are concerned about their impact on the environment. What we’re doing here is helping to reduce energy use,” said Colin Reger, of Basement Systems.

To many people, doing work down in a crawl space may seem intimidating. Randy Shillingburg, who is the director of business development for Basement Systems, says many homeowners don’t even go into their crawl spaces but a few times in a decade.

“It’s out of sight, out of mind. I don’t want to go down there because I know it’s dirty,” he said.

“If you went to probably 9 out of every 10 homes that are being built today, you would find a very thin layer of plastic on the dirt ground, and over time, you will find problems.”

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