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Stephen's Hole

 


Stephen Sewell, one of the founders of the town of Marlinton, lived in a cave not far from the place where he had first lived with his pioneer partner in a hollow sycamore tree. 

He had quarreled with his partner over the subject of infant baptism and left him to his wooden tent, while he went to a fine stone house in a cliff at a remote bit of wilderness , where present Stephen's Run crosses the highway a short distance below Marlinton .  

The cave is known to this day as Stephen's Hole and is one which has been studied by geologists . It is a rectangular chamber with a square opening , a solid floor , high and dry in the woods , with enough rock overburden to make an atomic bomb harmless . It is large enough to make a roomy apartment for two families , but Stephen lived alone here for several years, a hermit .

His partner , Jacob Marlin , got the town named after him ; at first Marlin's Bottom , but that was changed , for obvious reasons, to Marlinton .

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