Gilmer Free Press

Flashback: What Happened on July 20, ....

•  1865 The Philadelphia and Burning Spring Oil Company was incorporated in West Virginia by the following: Samuel Kilpatrick, James Ballenger, James W. Early, Daniel H. Foster, J. Mitchell Baker, and William H. Taylor. The company’s main office was at Burning Springs, Wirt County.

•  1865 The Paint Creek and Ritchie County Oil and Mining Company was incorporated in West Virginia by the following: John Cornell, James W. Dare of Parkersburg; Montgomery Rankin of Newark, DE; John R. Hannaman of Wood County; and Charles Murphy of Philadelphia. The company’s purpose was to mine oil in Ritchie County, WV, and Floyd County, KY, with its main office at Parkersburg.

•  1917 Fire destroyed Dawson Hall at West Virginia Collegiate Institute (West Virginia State College) in Institute, Kanawha County. It was rebuilt in 1922.

•  1961 Areas around Charleston were hit by flash floods; twenty-three people were killed.

•  1973 Officials with the federal black lung program met with West Virginia coal miners.

•  1992 Pocahontas County officials admitted they dismissed charges against seven men in 1982, for their alleged roles in the murder of two women at a Rainbow Family gathering in 1980, due to improper state police investigative procedures.

•  1992 Federal Judge Charles Haden II sentenced former Logan County Circuit Judge Ned Grubb to 65 months in prison and fined him $25,000 following his conviction on bribery, obstruction of justice, mail fraud, racketeering and tampering with a witness charges.