Marker Front:
Malden
Early salt-making industry that was centered here peaked in the 1850s. In 1755, Mary Ingles and Betty Draper made salt for their Indian captors here at "Buffalo Salt Licks." John Dickinson bought the site in 1785. Wells sunk by Brooks and Ruffners in early 1800s led to thriving salt and related industries. Site of African Zion Baptist Church, the state's black Baptist mother church, placed on National Register of Historic Places, 1980.
Marker Reverse:
Booker T. Washington Homeplace
Washington, born in a slave cabin in Hales Ford, VA, ca. 1856, spent his early childhood in Kanawha Salines, now Malden, where he worked days in the salt industry and attended school for blacks at night. Upon his graduation from Hampton Institute, he returned to teach public and Sunday school for two years. Later, as Tuskegee Institute president, he often visited his half sister Amanda Johnson here.
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