This was not an expression of generosity, but was instead intended to have them “avoid acquiring the vulgar manners of Negro domestics.”[2] Harry was sent to England with her 4-year-old sister, Margaret, at the age of 13.
[2] Harry lived under the stewardship of the previous business partner of her father and slave trader Nathaniel Spriggs, who held a very well-established academic company in his circle, while her sister was sent to boarding school.
[3] Mixed race women travelling from outside England to gain access to education were often considered to be White, as they were raised with similar religious and social ideals of Anglo-Saxon society.
[4] Harry won an award for her artwork in 1778, receiving a gold medal from the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturing, and Commerce, based in London.
After her sister's death, she found solace in a woman she met through Sprigg's intellectual social circle, Mary Morris Knowles.
[1] Quakers were some of the first to pursue the goal of the abolition of slavery, as they saw no difference in the soul of Black slaves or White high-society figures.
[2] Harry instead found her own financial support and acquired a job working for the wealthy Quaker Sampson Lloyd as a governess for his fifteen children, and living with her friend Knowles.
The Lloyd family was a generous beneficiary and supporter of the abolition movement, focusing their efforts on Jamaica from their home in England.
Jane Harry married Joseph Thresher in 1782 at a Quaker House in London, with Mary Knowles acting as a witness of their union.
Due to the international conflict between America and England, Harry was never able to complete her goal of returning home to free her mother's slaves and teach them in the practices of Quakerism.
Instead, Harry left in her obituary, which appears in the Gentleman's Magazine 1784 addition, her final desire to free the slaves owned by her mother.