The land on which Black Heath was built was originally part of a land grant to John Tullitt. He received a land grant for sponsoring the passage of Huguenot refugees. Tullit received 17,653 acres for importing 353 people.(slaves) This vast tract of land, although recorded as having 17,653 acres, actually had at least 27,500 acres based on the locations of the survey posts and lines seen from satellite imagery today. When Hannah Brummall Tullitt, the widow of John Tullitt, died in 1737, she left land near Falling Creek with coal pits to her brother John's children. John Brummall was the great-grandfather of Elijah Brummall, a local coal mine owner in the early 1800s and the owner of Aetna Hill, a house built in 1791 that was 0.7 miles southwest of Black Heath.