This portrait by Lela Harris is part of the 'Facing the Past: Black Lancastrians' exhibition which first went on display at Judges' Lodgings Museum in Lancaster in 2022. 

Molly, the subject of this portrait, was baptised in November 1764 in the Priory Church close to Lancaster Castle. Sadly she died just a month later and although we know very little about her life it's likely she lived as a servant, free or enslaved, with a local merchant family.

Using historical archives and imagination Harris created a series of portraits of real historical figures that lived in Lancaster in the 1700s. Their stories include 'Ebo Boy' who ran away from his enslaver Reverend Thomas Clarkson, the rector of Heysham Church. And Frances Elizabeth Johnson a servant at 20 Castle Park, who was brought from St Kitts to Lancaster by Mary Rawlins, daughter of a plantation owner.

A number of the portraits were acquired by the museum service and are currently on display at the museum.