Dr. Janice Lovelace was the featured speaker this afternoon, October 24, 2021, at a joint meeting hosted by the Black Diamond Historical Society and South King County Genealogical Society, on Black Miners in the West.   The event was well attended with people from all over the United States who have an interest in the heritage of the Black miners who came west in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Notes from the meeting:  https://skcgs.groups.io/g/Society/message/1934  . People who live in South King County, especially on the eastern side are familiar with the coal mining communities of Newcastle, Renton, and Black Diamond; some may even remember the names of Franklin, Cedar Mountain and other towns from long ago. Franklin WA ~ Cemetery ~Abandoned Mining Town by vikisuzan, (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) I've had an interest in the mining operations at Franklin ever since I discovered the names of the 37 men who died in the mine fire of August 24, 1894.  That lead to other stories about Franklin i

  by Katie Hanzeli “If it wasn’t for coal, there never would have been a Black Diamond, Washington.” 1 About 1885, the Black Diamond Coal Company of California sent Morgan Morgan, their superintendent and Mr. P. B. Cornwall, the company’s president up North to check out the prospect of moving its entire operation from Nortonville to what is now Black Diamond, Washington. Coal, good quality coal, had been discovered in Newcastle, just North of there and explorations showed that even more was to be had. Morgan and Cornwall liked what they saw. The mostly Welsh and some Italian employees, their families and all the equipment were packed up, lock, stock and barrel, and moved to Washington. Even before coal became king, there were homesteaders nearby, who had to go to Seattle via Covington to get supplies. Everything else they grew themselves, including tobacco. 2 They had been settled in the area since the early 1870’s. Welsh, Italians, Slovenians, British and other nationalitie