Black Heath (Chesterfield County)
Coordinates: 37°30′18.2″N 76°36′54″W / 37.505056°N 76.61500°W Black Heath was a home and coal mine located along the Old Buckingham Road in the present Midlothian area of Chesterfield County, Virginia. The Black Heath coal mining enterprises were operated by the Heth family between 1785 and 1844, when the mine closed following a fatal explosion.
Black Heath was the home of Captain John Heth (1798–1842), an officer in the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812. His son, Confederate Major General Henry Heth, who fought in the American Civil War, was born there in 1825.
The geology of the area about 10 miles west of the fall line of the James River at near present-day Richmond, Virginia includes a basin of coal which was one of the earliest mined in the Virginia Colony. This natural resource was mined by the French Huguenot refugees who settled there and others beginning around 1700.
By the second quarter of the 18th century, a number of private coal pits were operating on a commercial scale in coalfield located the area we now know as Midlothian. Miners immigrated to Chesterfield from Wales, England and Scotland. The Wooldridge family from East Lothian and West Lothian in Scotland was among the first to undertake coal mining in the area. It is likely that the mining community was eventually named after their Mid-Lothian Mining enterprise, a combination of their two home town names. The Heths, beginning with Colonel Henry "Harry" Heth (died 1821), who emigrated about 1759, who were English investors, opened coal pits in the county.
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