Born about 1856, Booker T. Washington moved to Kanawha Salines, now Malden, as a child. He attended a black school while holding salt, coal, and other jobs. In 1872, he went to Hampton Institute, graduating in 1875. For two years he taught public and Sunday school at Malden. As head of Tuskegee Institute from 1881 until his death in 1915, he often returned here to visit his family. Malden was the site of the Great Buffalo Licks. In 1755, captives Mary Ingles and Betty Draper were brought there by Native Americans and made salt. Elisha Brooks began the first salt furnace in 1797, and the Dickinson, Ruffner, and Shrewsbury families ran a thriving salt industry that peaked in the 1850s. The town's African Zion Baptist Church was the mother church for West Virginia black Baptists.