#52 Ancestors 2021 Week 28 Transportation: Five Generations of Road Builders

 My family has roadbuilding in its genes.  For the last five generations, my family has been involved in building and maintaining Maryland's roads.  

Well, technically, it probably goes further back than that.  While much early transportation was done on the waterways, Maryland passed its first public roads law in 1666, ordering county commissioners to make roads passable for foot and horse traffic.  Overseers were appointed in each county and county residents were required to contribute either tobacco or labor toward road maintenance.  I'm sure my ancestors were included in that aspect of road construction.

However, county labor and tax levies were very soon unequal to the demand and road travel, according to contemporary accounts, remained pretty much a harrowing experience throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.  Agitation for better roads came particularly from farmers anxious to get their crops more easily to market and their grain more easily to the mill.  The introduction of the automobile in the early 1900's only increased the demand for better roads.  

Maryland responded in 1898 by asking the State Geologic and Economic Survey to investigate the condition of roads throughout the state and the cost of improving them. In 1908, after seeing the enormous cost of maintaining roads, Maryland established the State Roads Commission to construct, improve and maintain a State system of roads and highways, funded in part by registration fees from those pesky automobiles. 

Maryland Highways ca. 1924

And here is where my family enters the road building picture.  Roads Commission field offices were established in the counties around the state.  My great-grandfather, John Marshall Dent, known as Marshall, (and in the family as Poppa Dent) was hired to help with the investigation of the need for roads and by the 1920's was appointed to run the field office in St. Mary's County.  

Marshall was born in 1873 in Georgia, where his father John Marshall Dent Sr. (known in the family as Big Poppa) had fled to fight for the confederacy during the Civil War.  The family later returned to St. Mary's County and raised ten children there, Marshall being the oldest son.  

Marshall was always a tinkerer and worked as a machinist, ran a lumber mill, and by 1920 was managing a garage. According to my Uncle Jack, Marshall's grandson, Marshall could fix anything and was often consulted by automobile owners about their car troubles. So, he was an excellent choice to work with the State Roads Commission to identify where the county needed new or improved roads. In fact, his work with the State Roads Commission led him to meet his future wife, Mary Turner, as he explored the need for roads in Calvert County.  They married in 1898. 

About 1920, my grandfather, Frank Philip Scrivener Jr., was discharged from the Navy after serving in WWI and was looking for work.  His mother, Louise Gwynn Scrivener, was a noted civic activist who served on numerous government commissions and managed to pull strings with Governor Albert Ritchie to get her son a job with the State Roads Commission.

Young Frank (shown here with his father Frank Sr.) was charged with travelling around the state to visit the various field offices and collect information about where roads needed to be built or enhanced. 

Frank's job had the side benefit of introducing him to Marshall Dent and eventually to Marshall's daughter, Elizabeth, whom Frank married in 1924. (And who would have thought the State Roads Commission could be such a hotbed of romance?) His state job kept him working through the Great Depression and he served the State Roads Commission for 46 years until his retirement in 1968. 

After a series of construction and maintenance posts, in 1931, he was made the maintenance engineer for state roads, and  in 1964 was named Assistant Chief Engineer for Maintenance and Operations.  For more than 30 years, Frank was responsible for the maintenance of Maryland's 4300-mile highway system as well as the equipment necessary to do that maintenance. Among his innovations, he was responsible for the first radio communications system in state roads vehicles and for the development of a prison labor system that kept the roads operating during the labor shortage of WWII.  

A registered professional engineer, Frank earned a national reputation in his field, serving in leadership positions in the Maryland Association of Engineers, the American Association of State Highway Officials and the American Road Builders Association. 

Meanwhile, Frank's oldest son, my father, Frank Philip Scrivener III, born in Baltimore in 1925, also became involved in road-building but from a more hands-on perspective.  After serving in the Army during WWII, and attending Loyola College on the GI Bill, Frank III went to work for E. Stewart Mitchell Asphalt Company in Baltimore.  That's him on the right below with a Mitchell truck.

One of his first jobs was  paving the tarmac and runways for the 3300-acre Friendship Airport outside his home town. (That's a lot of asphalt!) Later, Frank managed to convince the Army that his specialized skills would be more valuable in the US than overseas and he travelled around the country for the government supervising the paving of airport runways as far away as Michigan and South Carolina, a deal worked out to prevent him being recalled to Army service and sent to Korea. 

Friendship Airport 1950

In 1958, Frank had the opportunity to join Tom and Bill Baldwin to form Reliable Asphalt Company in Anne Arundel County MD.  He served as its President until 1978 when Reliable Asphalt became a division of Reliable Contracting. He then served as General Manager of Reliable Contracting until his retirement in 1989.

Dad spent a lot of his time in his green Reliable pick-up truck, travelling around the state to inspect various paving jobs. Driving around was one of his favorite pastimes. As a special treat, or maybe because we were driving Mom crazy and she wanted us out of the house, one or more of us kids would sometimes get to ride with him. I can still remember the pungent smell of fresh asphalt and coming home covered in dust (from the unpaved part of the roads) with asphalt stuck to my shoes (big no-no!) from the newly-paved part of the road.  Dad's favorite jobs were when he got install a tennis court; that was his specialty.  He was a nationally-ranked player and spent almost all his free time with a racquet in his hand. Of course, he built himself a court in our back yard. 

Like his father, Frank was a leader in his field, serving as President of the Maryland Asphalt Association and a board member of the National Asphalt Pavement Association.  

Quite a few of the Scrivener young men got one of their first jobs at Reliable thanks to my Dad.  Even I worked at Reliable in my teens weighing trucks at the asphalt plant and doing office work.  My brother, Robert Keene Scrivener, however, followed more directly in Dad's footsteps and went to work full-time for Reliable after graduating from college. 

Rob has been with Reliable for over 40 years now and serves as Vice President and Chief Operations Officers for the Plants, Paving and Trucking Operations. Like Dad, Rob has served in leadership roles in the Maryland Asphalt Association, the Maryland Transportation Builders and Materials Association and the National Asphalt Pavement Association.  

Rob's sons Bryan and Nathan have continued the road-building tradition for a fifth generation, working at  Reliable as Vice-President of the Southern Division (Charles County) and Director of the Quality Control Lab, respectively.