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Whilst undergoing a survey of the West Sussex parish registers for individuals of African, African Caribbean, South Asian, or of multiple heritage, Alice Millard came across the name of a boy being baptised in the small port town of New Shoreham in 1794, his father Marcus being described as a Black man. This lead her down a windy research path quite different from those she had done before and resulted in the identification of Marcus Richard Fitzroy Thomas in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s 1782 dual portrait of Charles Stanhope, the third Earl of Harrington. The talk will take you through this remarkable research journey and explore the extraordinary life of Marcus Thomas, which began in colonial Jamaica and ended in London having travelled up and down the length of Britain.
Content warning Please be aware that this talk will include an image of an historic parish register entry containing racist language. It will also cover subjects including the transatlantic slave trade.
Alice Millard is a project archivist at West Sussex Record Office (WSRO) and has completed two projects in the past two years: cataloguing the archives of Sir Freddie Laker, funded by the Business Archives Council, and of Crawley New Town, as part of a Wellcome funded project called The New Jerusalems. Before qualifying as an archivist, she worked for WSRO as a research assistant fulfilling commissions for the public. Prior to this, she worked in the museum sector in various roles including exhibition planning.
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