Was John Tharp from a Different World?
My x6 great grandfather, John Tharp, was born in Hanover parish in Jamaica in about 1744. His father owned a few small sugar plantations that were worked by enslaved people, and John Tharp built on this inheritance by acquiring neighbouring plantations, harnessing water power to drive his sugar mills, and building his own quay in Falmouth to control the shipping as well as the production of his sugar . Many of his investments were funded by his business partner, William Miles , who one of the leading sugar importers in Bristol. Letters between them are preserved in the Cambridgeshire County Archives and excepts are available here . Tharp enslaved over 3000 people at a time on his ten plantations, though there were fewer by the time compensation was claimed . In addition to five legitimate children born of his first marriage, he fathered at least two children on enslaved women. He also financed slave-trading expeditions to Africa and became wealthy beyond imagining from the misery a