Norval Marley

Norval Sinclair Marley (1885 - 1955). The phenotypically white Jamaican became famous as the father of the Reggae musician Bob Marley. Norval Marley was born in Jamaica to Albert Thomas Marley, an English man from Sussex, and Ellen Broomfield a bourgeois coloured Jamaican. He travelled to England from America where he joined the British Army in August 1916 at Liverpool and was enlisted in to the Labour Corps (Home Service); he had previously been employed as a Ferro-Concreter in Cuba. Marley family members, such as Norval's nephew Michael George Marley (son of Norval's brother Noel) stated that he was a descendant of Syrian Jews. In a 2003 interview, Michael George Marley revealed: "…I was told by my mother, grandmother and uncle,...