Today in Wheeling History: February 27 — Melvin De Groote, one of America's most prolific inventors, was born in Wheeling (1895).
 
Melvin De Groote, born February 27, 1895, in Wheeling, West Virginia, to Louis and Jennie (Fuld) DeGroote, became one of the most celebrated inventors in American history. His parents, both of German-Jewish heritage, had immigrated to the United States and settled in Wheeling before relocating to Sistersville, West Virginia, by 1900. Growing up during Sistersville's oil boom likely sparked his lifelong fascination with petroleum chemistry. He attended Sistersville High School before earning a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Ohio State University in 1915.
 
After graduation, De Groote worked briefly at Maxwell Motor Company before joining the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh as a flavorings expert. While there, he was rumored to have been hired by Coca-Cola to reformulate its syrups to remove alcoholic ingredients banned under Prohibition, though the company has never acknowledged any changes to its recipes. In 1924 he was recruited as chief research chemist at Tret-O-Lite Company in St. Louis, remaining with the firm — later merged into Petrolite Corporation — for 36 years, retiring in 1960 as vice president of research and development.
 
De Groote amassed 925 U.S. patents, primarily for chemical de-emulsifying agents that separate crude oil from water, salt, and sulfur. He also invented the formula allowing chocolate to adhere to ice cream, contributing to the Eskimo Pie. "Time" magazine's 2000 millennium issue ranked him second only to Thomas Edison among American inventors. Ohio State honored him with the Lamme Medal in 1950 and an honorary Doctorate of Science in 1955. He received the American Chemical Society's Midwest Award in 1959.
 
De Groote married Esther Grossman in 1922; the couple had two children. He died February 3, 1963, in University City, Missouri, and is buried at Valhalla Cemetery in St. Louis County. His parents are buried at Mount Wood Cemetery in Wheeling.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/mr3mm6w6), The Ohio State University (https://tinyurl.com/424yyvvn) (https://tinyurl.com/5ey2zrfm) (https://tinyurl.com/5ekunekx), Biographies (https://tinyurl.com/asftnrks), Prabook (https://tinyurl.com/377dnf94) (https://tinyurl.com/rhj48xdw), Geni (https://tinyurl.com/dnctr6a), Find a Grave (https://tinyurl.com/55yhwze6) (https://tinyurl.com/4u64wpfd) (https://tinyurl.com/3y4tmhjs), Homestead Hebrew Data (https://tinyurl.com/w5ajzb3f), SciSpace (https://tinyurl.com/3hjdy3jt), Carnegie Mellon University (https://tinyurl.com/3bnpyt2e), Business Insider (https://tinyurl.com/3vp2xdpn), Royal Society of Chemistry (https://tinyurl.com/ye2xurme), Encyclopedia.com (https://tinyurl.com/477xb8vb), Harvard Business School (https://tinyurl.com/yc8mtk8a), Stacker.com (https://tinyurl.com/38kfsjr4), Company-Histories.com (https://tinyurl.com/nu2e92dp), The Lantern (https://tinyurl.com/yrcfytca), Newspapers.com (https://tinyurl.com/257bkbwa)
 
Photo credits: The Ohio State University Archives, Google Maps, Wikimedia Commons, Find a Grave

​Today in Wheeling History: February 27 — John B. Garden, pioneer utility executive and co-founder of the Wheeling Electric Company, was born in Wheeling (1860).
 
John Bridgeman Garden was born in Wheeling on February 27, 1860, the son of Alexander T. and Mary M. Bankard Garden. His grandfather, David Garden, a native of Scotland, had settled in the Wheeling district in 1816 and established a tannery in North Wheeling. John was educated in Wheeling's public schools and later attended a local business college. His first employment was with A. J. Sweeney & Sons, boat builders and foundry operators.
 
As a young man, Garden became fascinated with the emerging science of electricity. Along with his father and associates A. J. Sweeney and John M. Sweeney, he helped install Wheeling's first electric generating plant in the basement of Sweeney's machine shop at 10 Twelfth Street. On September 13, 1882 — just nine days after Edison turned on the lights in lower Manhattan — Garden pulled the switch that officially turned on Wheeling's first electric light. In 1886, he was promoted to general manager of the Wheeling Electric Company.
 
Under his leadership, the company ultimately merged into the American Gas and Electric Company and constructed a $10,000,000 steam turbine generator plant at Beech Bottom. Garden also helped introduce Wheeling's electric trolley system. In 1938, a new substation at Fifteenth and McColloch streets was dedicated in his honor with a bronze plaque.
 
Beyond his utility work, Garden served as president of the Community Savings & Loan Company and president of the Board of Trustees of the United Presbyterian Church for forty years. A charter member of the Wheeling Rotary Club, he also belonged to the Fort Henry Club and Wheeling Lodge No. 28, B.P.O.E. He married Mary Ralston Sweeney on June 17, 1885, and they had two children: G. Alan Garden, a Wheeling attorney, and Gertrude, wife of Russell R. Throp. Garden died on July 7, 1940, at his Warwood home, "Dalkeith Farm," and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Wheeling.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library – Biography of John B. Garden (https://tinyurl.com/yzrwn7r7); Find a Grave – John Bridgeman Garden (https://tinyurl.com/3df9v2x2), WVGenWeb – Biographical sketch of John B. Garden (https://tinyurl.com/mrx5wkr2), History of West Virginia, Old and New (Callahan, 1923), Wheeling Intelligencer (https://tinyurl.com/4mew2xy3), The Clio - Garden Park (https://tinyurl.com/55mfdj2v), Archiving Wheeling - Village of Light (https://tinyurl.com/nhjevnn4)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Find a Grave, Wheeling Intelligencer, American Electric Power, The Clio, Historical Marker Database, Google Maps, WTOV9

​Today in Wheeling History: February 25--Guy G. Groves, Wheeling police officer and inventor, filed his patent for a shoe-shining cabinet (1922).
 
Guy Geoffrey Groves, inventor, law enforcement officer, and civic figure, was born on March 25, 1871, at Short Creek in Ohio County, West Virginia, to William P. and Caroline Tuttle Groves. He was educated in the public schools of Ohio County. He later settled in Wheeling, residing at 77 Virginia Street on the Island.
 
Groves served as a member of the Wheeling Police Department under Chief Thomas Leyland and subsequently worked for many years as a special officer at the Benwood plant of the Wheeling Steel Corporation. Parallel to his law enforcement career, he served as banker for Wheeling Camp 474 of the Modern Woodmen of America for thirty years, retiring from that role in 1945.
 
On February 25, 1922, Groves filed a patent application for an improved shoe-shining cabinet — a compact, multi-purpose piece of household furniture housing shoe-cleaning accessories, a hinged foot-form, a folding support bracket, and a built-in seat. The patent, No. US1450076A, was granted on March 27, 1923. He assigned one-fourth interest in the patent to fellow Wheeling resident Holly Sayre.
 
Groves was a Protestant and a member of Wheeling Lodge No. 647, Modern Woodmen of America. He married Minnie Snider, and the couple had one daughter, Mildred Groves, a teacher at Madison School in Wheeling.
 
Groves retired approximately two years before his death. He died on June 2, 1947, at Ohio Valley General Hospital at the age of 76, after a brief hospitalization. Funeral services were held at Kepner's Funeral Home, 1308 Chapline Street, with the Rev. F. Graham Luckenbill of St. Paul's Episcopal Church officiating. He was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Wheeling.
 
To learn more: Wheeling News-Register (https://tinyurl.com/mjmu5ktj), Wheeling Intelligencer (https://tinyurl.com/2wdtxsuv), Google Patents (https://tinyurl.com/4xcvme8w), Find a Grave (https://tinyurl.com/3j247ujm)
 
Photo credits: U.S. Patent Office, Find a Grave, Wheeling News-Register, Wheeling Intelligencer
​

​Today in Wheeling History: February 24 — Judge George Western Thompson, former U.S. Congressman and Virginia circuit court judge, dies at Woodridge, his estate near the National Road (1888).
 
Born May 14, 1806, in St. Clairsville, Ohio, George Western Thompson graduated from Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1824 and studied law in Richmond, Virginia. Admitted to the Ohio bar in 1826, he practiced in St. Clairsville before moving to Wheeling in 1837, when the city was still part of Virginia. The following year, he was appointed deputy postmaster of Wheeling and also served on a commission settling jurisdictional disputes over the Ohio River between Virginia and Ohio.
 
President James K. Polk appointed Thompson U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia in 1848. In 1850, he was elected as a Democrat to the 32nd Congress, serving Virginia's 15th district from March 4, 1851, until his resignation on July 30, 1852, when the Virginia General Assembly elected him circuit court judge. As both congressman and judge, Thompson played a pivotal role in the Wheeling Suspension Bridge controversy, introducing resolutions that helped Congress declare the bridge a post road, sparing it from demolition despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that it impeded Ohio River navigation. Reelected circuit judge in 1860, he resigned in 1861, refusing to take the oath supporting West Virginia statehood, which he believed unconstitutional.
 
Thompson married Elizabeth Steenrod, daughter of prominent Wheeling developer Daniel Steenrod. Together they had several children, including Confederate Col. William P. Thompson, who later became vice president of Standard Oil. The couple resided at Woodridge, the historic Steenrod family estate at 1308 Steenrod Avenue — then on the outskirts of Wheeling along the National Road, but later incorporated into the city. Now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Woodridge was Thompson's home until his death on February 24, 1888, at age 81. His funeral on February 27 drew a large gathering of Wheeling's most prominent citizens, and he was interred at Stone Church Cemetery in Elm Grove.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV (https://tinyurl.com/y4wsvuzj) (https://tinyurl.com/3pn47py7); Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/2s4xva6d), U.S. House of Representatives (https://tinyurl.com/ys45xfkn), Find a Grave (https://tinyurl.com/3jwp3pks), Wheeling Daily Register (https://tinyurl.com/yc5wr3ke), WV Culture (https://tinyurl.com/2tmvnj7f)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wheeling Daily Register, Find a Grave, Google Maps

Today in Wheeling History: February 23—John Pendleton Kennedy, former Wheeling civil engineer who later became the first State Librarian of Virginia and a nationally influential leader in American library development, dies in Los Angeles, California (1944).
 
John Pendleton Kennedy, later a nationally influential librarian, spent key formative years in Wheeling. Born May 17, 1871, in Charlestown (now Charles Town), Jefferson County, West Virginia, to John Willoughby and Sarah Mark Rutherford Kennedy, he was sent to Wheeling for schooling and graduated from the German Lutheran school there in 1888. This education prepared him for technically demanding work; after five years in the Corps of Engineers, he returned to Wheeling in 1895 as a civil engineer, participating in the city’s late‑nineteenth‑century industrial and infrastructural growth. In 1898, he shifted into librarianship, joining the Library of Congress as an assistant librarian, where his engineering precision informed his approach to organizing knowledge. In 1903, Kennedy was called to Richmond to become the first State Librarian of Virginia, quickly emerging as a leader in the profession. He helped professionalize state library service, served as the first president of the Virginia Library Association, and held national roles including president of the National Association of State Libraries and vice president of the League of Library Commissioners. After 1907, he moved into editorial work with Silver, Burdett & Company in New York, shaping educational texts read across the country. Kennedy died February 23, 1944, in Los Angeles, California, leaving a legacy rooted in Wheeling’s classrooms and workplaces.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/2m69e7h8), Prabook (https://tinyurl.com/bdzjah7s), Wikidata (https://tinyurl.com/2m69e7h8)
 
Photo caption and credit: John Pendleton Kennedy (1871–1944), who spent formative years in Wheeling as a student at the German Lutheran school and later returned as a civil engineer during the city’s late‑nineteenth‑century industrial expansion. Kennedy went on to become the first State Librarian of Virginia and a nationally influential leader in early American library development. (Wikimedia Commons)

​Today in Wheeling History: February 22–The Wheeling Stogies are admitted to the newly reorganized Central League, securing the city’s place in Class B professional baseball for the 1915 season (1915). 
 
The Wheeling Stogies were Wheeling’s longest‑lived professional baseball identity, active under that name in various leagues from 1899 to 1916 and again from 1925 to 1934. Earlier Wheeling clubs had carried names like the Mountaineers, Nailers, and Standard, but “Stogies” tied the team directly to the city’s nationally known cigar industry and its Marsh Wheeling stogies. The club cycled through the Inter‑State, Central, Western Association, and finally the Middle Atlantic League, generally classified between Class A and Class C in the old minor‑league hierarchy. Their peak came in the Central League, where they won back‑to‑back pennants in 1909 and 1910 and regularly drew strong crowds to League Park on Wheeling Island. On February 22, 1915, the Stogies were formally admitted to the reorganized Central League, reaffirming Wheeling’s place in Class B professional baseball during a period of national instability in the minor leagues. The team continued to serve as a civic touchstone, drawing support from industrial workers, neighborhood clubs, and local businesses that embraced the Stogies as a symbol of the city’s working‑class identity. In 1933–34 the Stogies served as a Class C affiliate of the New York Yankees, briefly linking local fans to one of baseball’s most powerful franchises. Economic pressures and the shifting structure of the minors after the Great Depression helped bring the franchise to an end in 1934, but the Stogies era left Wheeling with a deep baseball memory that later American Legion, semi‑pro, and youth teams tried to carry forward.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia - Wheeling Stogies (https://tinyurl.com/2u3xcyds), StatsCrew - Wheeling Stogies franchise history (https://tinyurl.com/y326kdpm), Archiving Wheeling (https://tinyurl.com/yxyndw4t), Expatalachians – “The Long Game: A Brief History of Professional Baseball in West Virginia”) (https://tinyurl.com/2u3xcyds)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons

​Today in Wheeling History: February 21—James Allen Latané, former rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Wheeling who, while serving there, resigned from the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1874 before later becoming Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, dies in Baltimore, Maryland (1902).
 
James Allen Latané was born January 15, 1831, in Essex County, Virginia, to planter Henry Waring Latané and Susanna Allen, in a slaveholding household typical of Virginia’s antebellum elite. Privately educated, he attended the University of Virginia and then Virginia Theological Seminary, preparing for ordained ministry in the Protestant Episcopal Church. After early parish work in Virginia, he accepted a call to St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Wheeling, then a growing industrial city and Episcopal center for the Upper Ohio Valley. St. Matthew’s, founded in 1819, was one of Wheeling’s oldest congregations and an influential downtown parish.  
 
From Wheeling, on January 12, 1874, Latané wrote his famous letter to Bishop John Johns, resigning his orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He cited deep theological and ecclesiological disagreements, a decision he described as made “with sincere grief” yet compelled by conscience. Soon afterward he entered the Reformed Episcopal Church, a new denomination formed amid post–Civil War disputes over ritualism and authority. Consecrated bishop in 1879, he eventually served as Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church and bishop of the New York and Philadelphia Synod, shaping its identity in its formative decades. Latané died February 21, 1902, in Baltimore and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia, closing a career that linked Virginia’s planter world, Wheeling’s Episcopal life, and the wider story of American Protestant division and realignment.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV (https://tinyurl.com/3mtb7zkt); Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/2tsekf2f), Internet Archive (https://tinyurl.com/4f63zxh7), Open Library (https://tinyurl.com/42s8yser), FamilySearch  (https://tinyurl.com/mr3n9372)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; Wikimedia Commons

​Today in Wheeling History: February 19 — Charles E. Blue and William B. Jones receive reissued patent for their "Machine for the Manufacture of Narrow-Neck Bottles" (1901).
 
On February 19, 1901, Wheeling inventors Charles E. Blue and William B. Jones received Reissued Letters Patent No. 11,890 for their "Machine for the Manufacture of Narrow-Neck Bottles." The original patent, No. 650,722, had been issued on May 29, 1900. The reissued patent covered a revolutionary press-and-blow machine that mechanically produced glass bottles and jars, replacing skilled hand-blowers with an automated process.
 
Blue, born June 8, 1862, in Charleston, West Virginia, was the son of Charles Edwin Blue of Hampshire County and Elizabeth Jane Hoge of Wheeling. He organized the Wheeling Mold and Foundry Company on June 5, 1893, at 18th and Eoff Streets, with partners including Conrad Rader, Arthur G. Hubbard, and William V. Hogue, starting with capital of $100,000. The foundry specialized in glasshouse molds and machinery. Blue's glass-making machine — dubbed the "Blue Machine" — was first tested at Hazel Glass Company in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1895. By September 1897, the company had built eighteen machines for Hazel Glass, Beatty-Brady Company, and Atlas Glass Company, with twelve more under construction. Glass entrepreneur Charles N. Brady invested in the enterprise, and the collaboration proved transformative, producing Mason fruit jars at unprecedented scale and helping end the hand-blown era of glass manufacturing. Blue also later directed major contracts for Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel segments under the Hudson River and parts for the Panama Canal locks. He resigned as president of Wheeling Mold and Foundry in 1914 and retired to Ridgeway Farm in Albemarle County, Virginia, where he died October 3, 1947, at age 85. He is buried at Riverview Cemetery in Charlottesville, Virginia.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library, Wheeling WV  — Wheeling Mold & Foundry (https://tinyurl.com/ywt6kb5b), Find a Grave — Charles Edwin Blue (https://tinyurl.com/cbd5d4sd), Wheeling Heritage — Made in Wheeling (https://tinyurl.com/3jmsh5kf), West Virginia Northern Community College — Hazel-Atlas Glass History (https://tinyurl.com/3fntnd87), Google Patents — USRE11890 (https://tinyurl.com/43z4t4s7), Wikipedia — Charles N. Brady (https://tinyurl.com/mumtxbm6)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; U.S. Patent Office, Find a Grave

​Today in Wheeling History: February 16—West Virginia House Bill 57, confirming Moundsville as the site of the state penitentiary, is approved unanimously by the Senate in Wheeling (1866).
 
When West Virginia achieved statehood on June 20, 1863, the young state had no penitentiary. Beginning in 1864, the legislature directed Governor Arthur Boreman to have all persons convicted of felonies confined to the Ohio County Jail in Wheeling. That arrangement proved unsustainable. After nine inmates escaped in 1865, the local press took up the cause and the Legislature took action.
 
The legislative process unfolded swiftly in Wheeling, then the state capital. On January 17, 1866, Governor Boreman publicly called for a state penitentiary, and on January 18, Mr. Hornbrook offered a resolution to the Committee on Humane and Criminal Institutions to begin the process. On February 13, 1866, House Bill 57 was presented to the House of Delegates, with 51 votes split among four cities: Moundsville received 26 votes, Wheeling 19, Charleston 4, and Grafton 2. When the Senate received House Bill 57, Mr. Peck brought forth an amendment on February 15 to strike Moundsville and place the prison in Wheeling, but it failed 4–13. The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer reported on February 17 that the Senate unanimously approved House Bill 57 on February 16.
 
The legislature appropriated $50,000 to buy land and begin construction, directing the Board of Public Works to select a site of not less than 10 acres in or near Moundsville. Construction began in July 1866 using convict labor from the Ohio County Jail in Wheeling. The Gothic-style penitentiary operated continuously until 1995, earning a grim reputation as one of the nation's most violent correctional facilities before its closure. Today it operates as a museum and tourist attraction on the National Register of Historic Places.
 
To learn more: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV – West Virginia State Penitentiary (https://tinyurl.com/nhjey6sb) (https://tinyurl.com/t9jfp247); Wikipedia – West Virginia Penitentiary (https://tinyurl.com/bd9f4x6n), e-WV West Virginia Encyclopedia – Moundsville Penitentiary (https://tinyurl.com/mvw83bwy), LEDE News – Myth Busting About the W.Va. Penitentiary (https://tinyurl.com/2z2azhw4)
 
Photo credits: Ohio County Public Library Archives, Wheeling WV; West Virginia Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Commons

​Today in Wheeling History: February 17—Anne Elizabeth Rector, Wheeling‑born painter and designer, dies in San Juan, Puerto Rico (1970).
 
Anne Elizabeth Rector (1899–1970) was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, into a family steeped in creativity and early American media innovation. Her father, Enoch J. Rector, was a pioneering motion‑picture producer best known for filming the 1897 Corbett–Fitzsimmons boxing match, while her mother, Jessie Leach Rector, designed decorative furniture. Although the family relocated during her youth, Rector’s earliest years in Wheeling placed her at the intersection of craftsmanship, experimentation, and artistic expression. By 1910 the Rectors had moved to New York City, where Anne attended the Horace Mann School, graduating in 1917. She continued her training at the Art Students League, studying under realist painter John Sloan, and later worked with modernist Andrew Dasburg. Rector became a versatile artist—painter, sculptor, printmaker, illustrator, and designer—and eventually directed Rector Studios, known for its glass‑top tables. In 1924 she married Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist Edmund Duffy, sometimes signing her work as Anne E. Duffy. Her 1912 diary, discovered decades later, revealed a sharply observant young artist documenting early twentieth‑century life with humor and candor. Rector died in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1970, leaving behind a body of work shaped by both her Wheeling origins and her New York artistic career.
 
To learn more: Wikipedia (https://tinyurl.com/yc5m7v7s), Kirkus Reviews (https://tinyurl.com/bd9yuh8b)
 
Photo credits: Kirkus Reviews, askART