Mary Lee Brady, Ph.D.

African-American Coal Miners In Iowa

The name Lensey/Linsey like the names Jack/Jackson and even Maxwell are clues to be pursued in our speculation about Robinson relationships in both bodies and spirits such as the virtues of risk taking that is self-evident in the lives of coal miners.  Such characteristics anywhere on earth are not be found in average young men or women.  African-American young men since the very beginning of coal mining in Virginia, ... demonstrated their courage to go into the bowels of the earth where a relatively few men of any color or caste have ever dared.

Sarah Robinson, Lewis Marshall Martin's mother was born into a family of Black and Mulatto coal miners in the States of Virginia, West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania and up and down the Allegheny Mountains coal veins that stretched from Alabama to Pennsylvania.  We ought not fail to understand that long before and after slavery, ... tens of thousands of African-American men were valued as miners of coal and salt for the growing colonist and post-independence populations.

African-American Coal Miners

African-American Coal Miner Beginnings

Virginia Coal Fields

African-American Coal Miners In Iowa

There is sufficient evidence to believe that Sara Robinson, mother of Lewis Marshall Martin, was daughter of one of the Robinson brothers or cousins in the coal field areas of western Virginia and West Virginia.  It appears that she may have been the offspring of at least two or perhaps three generations of coal miners, slave and free. 

We are of the opinion the Black and Mulatto Robinsons like Sarah were also cousins and siblings to the Black and Mulatto Carters of Virginia whose origins can be easily traced back to the era of Carter plantations in Virginia.  Our view is that enslaved mothers had the privilege of naming their offspring and the fact that surnames such as Robinson, Carter and Lewis appeared in the post-Civil War records gathered by Census takers is because the matrilineal culture in place told offspring who their fathers were. 

                                        Iowa Coal Miners

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