Josiah Dent

Dent was, in 1874, a member of the Congressionally mandated committee that recommended the disposal of the territorial government and the formulation of a three-member board of commissioners (one Democrat, one Republican, and one non-affiliated planning engineer) for the District of Columbia. In July 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Dent as the Democratic commissioner on that board.

Dent became president of the board in the following year after the resignation of Seth Ledyard Phelps serving until July 1882. During his term as board president, Dent was noted for improving the relations between the capital city and the U.S. Treasury.

After his term as commissioner expired, Dent lived in Georgetown until 1889, when he married his second wife and moved to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia where he died in 1899. He was buried in Washington's Oak Hill Cemetery.

In 1900, the Josiah Dent School, named his honor, was built at 2nd and South Carolina SE. It was operated from the time it opened in 1901 until 1947 when it was closed due to declining enrollment. It then served as the DC Department of Education's repair shop until 1978. Faced with abandonment, the Capital Hill Day School, which had until then been housed in the Sunday school classrooms of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on East Capitol Street and Christ Church on G Street, leased the property and is currently housed in the facility.^[2]

• Josiah Dent's Obituary^{[permanent dead link]} - Washington Post, October 30, 1899.