Every Day Is Special: January 30 - Happy Birthday, Thomas Rolfe

January 30 - Happy Birthday, Thomas Rolfe

Posted on January 30, 2021

This is an update of my January 30, 2010, post:

Who the heck was Thomas Rolfe?

Thomas Rolfe was born on this day in 1615 to a very famous mother: Pocahontas.

(Here is a portrait that is supposed to be a picture of Pocahontas and Thomas.)

At the time of her son's birth, Pocahontas was called Rebecca Rolfe, because she had converted to Christianity, taken an English “first” name, and married Englishman John Rolfe. Many people, including Native American people, say that Pocahontas was actually forced to marry Rolfe and was basically kidnapped when taken to England. I think it's likely she was forced to convert to Christianity, too.

I definitely did not realize, until doing research for this piece, that Pocahontas wasn't her real name. Her formal names were Matoaka and Amonute. I read two totally different accounts of the name Pocahontas: one source claimed that Pocahontas was a childhood nickname that meant something like “rambunctious," and another source claimed that Pocahontas was the name of Matoaka's mother and meant "laughing and joyous." Apparently Matoaka's mother died in childbirth, and her father was so grief-stricken that he bonded with his baby by using the name of the dearly departed.

Pocahontas's father, Wahunsunacawh, was the paramount chief of the Powhatan people who lived in what is now Virginia near England's first successful colony, Jamestown.

Pocahontas is most famous for saving the life of colonist John Smith. But the incident may never have happened (we only know about it from Smith's retelling many years later), and even if it did happen, most references to the incident in popular culture are mythologized. For example, there is no evidence that Smith and Pocahontas fell in love—indeed, Smith wrote that she was only “tenne” (10) years old when she saved his life.

Whatever happened (or did not happen) in the Pocahontas-John Smith encounter, it is clear that this Powhatan princess befriended the English settlers in Jamestown and eventually, as mentioned, married one of them. In 1616 John Rolfe took his wife and son to London, where Pocahontas met King James and other society folk, interacted with John Smith (who had returned to England in 1609 after being injured in the New World), and sadly died at age 21, probably of a disease, just as the family was getting ready to return back to North America.

Pocahontas's son Thomas Rolfe grew up in England, and he married and had a daughter. Through this daughter, Anne Rolfe, Pocahontas and Thomas have descendants who live in England. In 1635 Thomas returned to the New World. There he remarried and had a second daughter, Jane Rolfe. Through this daughter, Pocahontas and Thomas have had many descendants in America, including two former first ladies, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson and Nancy Reagan.

National Geographic Kids has an interactive adventure about John Smith and Jamestown with lots of info and several mini-games.

Check out four very different portraits of Pocahontas:

Many people are most aware of Pocahontas because of the Disney animated movie. Of course, no one expects a Disney movie to be accurate history, but people who don't know better probably think that at least some of the broad strokes of the tale are true. However, they aren't.

She just doesn't look like a 10-year-old girl,
does she?

I ran across several items on the internet in which Native Americans complained about the inaccuracy and mythology of the Disney version of the Pocahontas story. Here's one,
and here is another.