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About Midlothian

Midlothian ( mid-LOH-thee-ən) is an unincorporated area in Chesterfield County, Virginia, U.S. Settled as a coal town, Midlothian village experienced suburbanization effects and is now part of the western suburbs of Richmond, Virginia south of the James River in the Greater Richmond Region. Because of its unincorporated status, Midlothian has no formal government, and the name is used to represent the original small Village of Midlothian and a vast expanse of Chesterfield County in the northwest portion of Southside Richmond served by the Midlothian post office. The Village of Midlothian was named for the early 18th-century coal mining enterprises of the Wooldridge family. Incorporated in 1836, their Mid-Lothian Mining and Manufacturing Company employed free and enslaved people to do the deadly work of digging underground. Midlothian is the site of the first commercially-mined coal in the Colony of Virginia and North America.By the early 18th century, several mines were being developed in Chesterfield County by French Huguenots and others.