Pocahontas

Princess Pocahontas was a Native American who, in the year 1607, intervened to save the life of pioneer Captain John Smith. Later, having married an Englishman, she left her home in Virginia to travel to England, where she became a regular in the court of King James. She became the first of her nation to convert to Christianity.

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In mid-March 1617 Pocahontas died while making a return voyage to Virginia. The last place down-river to take on fresh food and water would have been Gravesend, and it was here that Pocahontas may well have been brought ashore, either dead or dying.

Those who attended Pocahontas ensured her burial in the chancel of the parish church – the place reserved for clergy and notable parishioners. They then resumed their journey, leaving a small error in the Burial Register that no one could correct: ‘March 21 – Rebecca Wrolfe, wyffe of Thomas Rolfe gent. A Virginian lady borne, was buried in ye chancell’.

Captain Argall advised Rolfe to land his son Thomas at Plymouth, to be looked after until Rolfe’s ‘brother’, Henry (possibly a cousin) could fetch him back to London. From Virginia, Rolfe wrote, ‘My wife’s death is much lamented: my child much desired, when it is of better strength to endure so hard a passage, whose life greatly extinguisheth the sorrow of her loss, saying, “All must die. But ’tis enough that my child liveth”‘.

The following year Powhatan died. John Rolfe took a third wife, Jane Pierce, who had come out in 1610, and their child Elizabeth was born in 1620. In March 1622, John Rolfe dictated his will ‘being sick in body but of perfect mind and memory’ and presumably died of natural causes. On March 22nd at a pre-arranged signal, the Native Americans turned on the settlers, killing 340, but the survivors took their revenge and stayed on.

The Family of the Rolfes

Thomas, the son of Pocahontas, did not return to Virginia until about 1635. He asked permission to visit his uncle, Powhatan’s successor, but, as Captain of Fort James, he defended the settlers against his uncle’s second bid to destroy them in 1644. He married Jane Poythress, and their child, Jane, married Col. Robert Bolling in 1675. Their numerous descendants claim blood relation to Pocahontas.

In 1896, the memorial tablet to Pocahontas was put in the chancel of St George’s Church, and the memorial windows were presented by the Colonial Dames of America in 1914. In 1923, a Virginian received permission to search for the remains of Pocahontas, but nothing conclusive was found. St George’s churchyard was laid out as the Princess Pocahontas Garden in 1958, a replica of Jamestown’s statue of Pocahontas was unveiled and the Queen gave St George’s the replica of the chalice and paten used by the original settlers in 1607.

Her grave is thought to be underneath the church’s chancel, though that church was destroyed in a fire in 1727. Despite extensive searches the location of the grave remains unknown. Since 1958 she has been commemorated by a life-sized bronze statue in the churchyard, a replica of the 1907 Jamestown sculpture by the American sculptor William Ordway Partridge.

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