Biographical / Historical

Colonel Henry Marsh Pratt (1838-1919) was the son of the Reverend William Pratt of Harpley, Norfolk, and a descendant of Edward III. In November 1856 he joined the Indian Staff Corps, his section of which became the Bengal Staff Corps in 1861. He was present at the 1857 mutiny of the 51st Bengal Infantry; served in the Second Anglo-Chinese War in 1860; took part in the march from Kabul to Kandahar and the battle of Kandahar during the second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880; and commanded a column of the Hazars Field Force during the 1888 Black Mountain Expedition (Tor Ghar, now northwestern Pakistan). Pratt was made Companion of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath (CB) when he retired from the British army in 1889. He married Evelyn Margaret Freake Glyn in 1891 and they had two daughters, Pleasance Millicent Mary Pratt and Evelyn Lucy Pratt.

Sources consulted:

Buckland, Charles Edward, "Pratt, Henry Marsh (1838-)," Dictionary of Indian Biography. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1906.

Cox, Horace, "Pratt, Col. Henry Marsh," Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. London: Horace Cox, 1912.

Ruvigny et Raineval, Melville Henry Massue, marquis de, The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal: The Mortimer-Percy Volume. Westminster, Maryland: Heritage Books, 2011.

Terpak, Fran, "Acquisition Approval Form for Pratt Family Album, ca. 150 albumen photographs from India and Norfolk, 1860s and 1870s," accession no. 2018.R.25, April 6, 2018.