Coal operator John Nuttall (April 9, 1817 – September 17, 1897) was the first of many British miners to find success in southern West Virginia’s untapped coalfields.

Nuttall was born in Accrington, an industrial town in northern England known for textile and brick manufacturing. Nuttall entered his family’s weaving trade at age eight as a tierboy, adding dye to the printer’s pad to produce colored fabrics. He began mining coal at age 11 and bounced between weaving and mining into early adulthood.

In 1849, Nuttall migrated alone to New York to work in a textile factory owned by the Crabtree family, who were relatives of his wife, Elizabeth. Nuttall secured enough money for his family to join him the following year. By 1856, he had amassed the necessary funds to quit the silk mill and open a coal mine in neighboring Pennsylvania, to varying degrees of successes and failures.

Nuttall first heard of southern West Virginia’s pristine coalfields in 1870. Looking for a shrewd investment, he ventured south to the moderately developed Kanawha Coalfield. However, he found the property too expensive and the coal poor in quality. During his travels, however, he struck up a conversation with the innkeeper of Alderson Tavern regarding why he burned coal—rather than wood—in the fireplace. The innkeeper showed Nuttall outcroppings on his property (later identified as the Sewell Seam) but did not believe enough was present to warrant industrial mining. Nuttall took a sample for analysis to Philadelphia, where chemists ensured him of its purity.

Nuttall returned to Chestnutburg (a Fayette County ghost town near the Midland Trail) in 1872 and purchased thousands of acres. Nuttall’s company town—Nuttallburg—was one of the first to ship coal following the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s completion in 1873. On the heels of Joseph Beury, Nuttall became the second coal operator in the newly opened New River Coalfield. Nuttallburg’s mines initially produced over 750 tons of coal daily.

Nuttall grew wealthy. To model himself as an aristocrat in the British landholding tradition, he purchased large parcels—the greatest encompassing five square miles—without any intent to develop this acreage. An individualist, he believed any miner could follow in his footsteps, once claiming that “his own employees had the same opportunities that he had if they would put their pennies and nickels in the bank instead of into their mouths in the form of pop, peanuts, [and] candy.”

Nuttall had three wives. His first, Elizabeth, died of an unknown illness. His second marriage ended in divorce due to spousal incompatibility. His last wife, Martha, remained with Nuttall until his death at Dubree on Nuttall Mountain. He had four children with Elizabeth: three daughters and one son. His son, Lawrence, became a respected and widely published botanist.

In 1919, believing that most of the local coal had been mined out, Nuttall’s descendants sold the Nuttallburg Mine to Henry Ford. Over the next decade, his Fordson Coal Company installed state-of-the-art equipment and significantly increased production. Ford sold his interest in the operation in 1928, after which production was essentially confined to local use and ended entirely in 1958.

Nuttall’s descendants still own substantial landholdings in the New River Gorge region.