Qualla: Black Heath https://qualla.com/black-heath en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Black Heath https://qualla.com/black-heath Black Heath: Introduction https://qualla.com/black-heath/ Photo credit LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903., Public domain. The coal that heated Thomas Jefferson's White House came from a 97-acre tract in Chesterfield County, Virginia, that would eventually consume itself. Black Heath was a mansion, a mine, and a cautionary tale all at once. The Heth family bought the land in 1795, dug shafts hundreds of feet deep, shipped high-quality coal down the James River, married into Virginia's most prominent dynasties, and built one of the first incorporated coal mining companies in the state. Then the tunnels they carved beneath their own home collapsed, and sometime in the late 1910s or 1920s, the grand house dropped into the earth it had profited from for over a century.

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Image: LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/dq8v-black-heath-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Black Heath: Coal Beneath the Colony https://qualla.com/black-heath/ Photo credit LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903., Public domain. Long before the Heths arrived, French Huguenot refugees and Scottish miners had been pulling coal from the ground west of Richmond's fall line since around 1700. The mining community that grew up here was first called Coalfield, after a station on the Richmond and Danville Railro...

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Image: LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/dq8v-black-heath-coal-beneath-the-colony.mp3 0:06 2 full Black Heath: The Heth Dynasty https://qualla.com/black-heath/ Photo credit LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903., Public domain. Harry Heth grew spectacularly wealthy from coal. His children married Randolphs, Harrisons, and Picketts, the aristocratic surnames of old Virginia. He built the Black Heath mansion, an L-shaped house with four distinct sections mixing gable, hipped, and gambrel roofs in an eccen...

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Image: LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/dq8v-black-heath-the-heth-dynasty.mp3 0:06 3 full Black Heath: The Price in Blood https://qualla.com/black-heath/ Photo credit LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903., Public domain. The wealth of Black Heath was extracted at terrible human cost. On March 18, 1839, an explosion ripped through a shaft 700 feet deep, killing 53 men, most of them enslaved African Americans. Five years later, on June 15, 1844, another blast killed 11 more. The Maidenhead pits, wh...

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Image: LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/dq8v-black-heath-the-price-in-blood.mp3 0:06 4 full Black Heath: The Ground Gives Way https://qualla.com/black-heath/ Photo credit LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903., Public domain. After the Civil War, Black Heath entered a long decline. A. F. D. Gifford, an English attorney for the mining company, had occupied the house, but he drowned in 1862 when his ship sank trying to run the Union blockade. Colonel William B. Ball, a Confederate cavalry officer turned...

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Image: LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/dq8v-black-heath-the-ground-gives-way.mp3 0:06 5 full Black Heath: Subdivisions Over Shafts https://qualla.com/black-heath/ Photo credit LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903., Public domain. In 1957, Joseph Cogito sold the remnant tracts to Paul Duke, a Richmond journalist who went on to host Washington Week in Review on PBS for twenty years. By 1971, Duke began selling parcels for housing development. Today the subdivision named Black Heath sits on the old mine land...

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Image: LaPrade, J. E. (Joseph Edgar), 1845-1903. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/black-heath-wp/dq8v-black-heath-subdivisions-over-shafts.mp3 0:06 6 full