Suetonius Grant Heatly

Suetonius Grant Heatly and his sister, Temperance. (Arthur William Devis, c. 1786) Suetonius Grant Heatly (sometimes spelled as Heatley; 1751–1793) was a judge employed by the British East India Company and, with John Sumner, established what is considered to be the first coal mine in India.

Heatly was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in what is now the United States, to a family that had a Scottish heritage.and was loyal to the British Crown. That loyalty caused them to move to England around the time of the American Revolution. His connections and ability were useful in his career with the East India Company, which he joined in 1766 and for which he held various offices.

Grant and his colleague, Sumner, saw potential in the extraction of coal in India and attempted to capitalise on that and their relationship with the East India Company, which they envisaged as being a significant purchaser. Their project involved several mine workings, the precise location of which has been debated. It was beset by problems, including those related to extraction, logistics and disease, and eventually petered out. Sumner had left before its demise, and others had become involved.

Heatly, who never married but may have formed a relationship with a native Indian woman, died in 1793.

Early life Heatly was born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1751. He was the oldest son of a merchant, Andrew Heatly, and his wife, Mary (née Grant), both of whom were of Scots descent. His younger siblings included a brother, Patrick, and a sister, Temperance. (Patrick Heatly (1753, Rhode Island – 1834, London) was also an employee of the East India Company, working first in India and then as a member of its "secret Council" in England.) Temperance married a captain of the Royal Navy, William Green, possibly while also in India, and eventually settled in Utica, New York, USA. His easy manner, his family's loyalty to Britain, and his connections to other American royalists stood him in good stead within the Company at the time of the American Revolution and beyond. When Cornwallis was appointed Governor-General of India, still smarting from his military defeats in America, Heatly became a favourite. He was Collector of Chotanagpur and Palamu by 1774 and by 1783 he held a similar position for Purnia.

He became a magistrate for the province of Dana

Although Heatly worked for the Company, one of his contemporaries – William Green – suggested that he could be used as a conduit for letters which might subvert the aims of the Company. A 1784 letter sent by Green to Christopher Champlin in the USA, discussed plans for a trading voyage to Bengal and elsewhere. Green says

Coal mining Kautilya recorded mining activities in India around 400 BCE, in his Arthashastra but these operations related to precious stones and metals rather than coal. The first documented discovery of coal was in 1774, when Heatly and Sumner (another colonial administrator) saw it being used to create fires while they were travelling on the Damodar River. says that the area was at that time under the rule of the Rajah of Ramghur and that On 11 August 1774 they put forward a proposal for commercial extraction in a part of what now forms the Raniganj Coalfield.

James Rennell's map of ca. 1765, showing many of the placenames referred to.

Heatly and Sumner proposed to establish six mines in an area which they defined as

They wrote to Warren Hastings, the Governor-General, requesting William Wilson Hunter, in summarising the accounts of others writing before him, states that "Coal was known to exist in the District as early as 1774, and was actually worked in 1777." Furthermore, Heatly was posted far away to Purnia, making personal supervision impossible, and from 1781 the East India Company began to make it more difficult for its employees to conduct private ventures of this nature.

Death Heatly died in Bengal in 1793.

A subsequent obituary of his brother, Patrick, recorded that Heatly had been "well known ... for talent and amiability".

In 1884 and 1885, long after his death, notices appeared in The London Gazette advising that he was among a group of people who had not claimed shares in the British Fisheries Society and giving his position as Collector of Purnia.