Volume 12 Number 056 Jamestown Journey: John Rolfe - II

Lead: In 1616 Mr. and Mrs. John Rolfe and their infant son Thomas, sailed for England. There John and Pocahontas took the country by storm, impressing investors and emigrants with the opportunities to be had in Virginia.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Through his experimenting with the sweet Caribbean variety of tobacco, John Rolfe had discovered the key to Virginia's economic salvation. His marriage to Pocahontas had secured a welcome respite in tension between Native Americans and the settlers. Two years after their marriage he brought his family with Governor Sir Thomas Dale to England to encourage financial support for the colony and recruitment for settlers.

In England the Rolfes met the Bishop of London and were presented to King James I and Queen Anne at Whitehall Palace. What was clearly a triumph of Virginia Company propaganda, turned to tragedy when, on their way, home Pocahontas died. Leaving his son to be raised by relatives, Rolfe returned to Virginia and continued his enthusiastic support for the Company and its stewardship of colony affairs. He was promoted to higher positions in the colonial administration and assisted Captain John Smith in writing a general history of the colony.

Richly rewarded with land grants by 1621 he was a member of the Council of State. During the Powhatan uprising in 1622 his holdings at Bermuda Hundred were destroyed. Some historians believe he may have died in the attack. Other sources confirm that he died of natural causes that year. Whatever his end, John Rolfe played a leading role in the commercial, social, and diplomatic life of Jamestown in its first decade, and provided important assistance to the Virginia Company in the image management of the colonial enterprise.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Price, David. Love and Hate in Jamestown. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2003.

Rolfe, John. A True Relation of the State of Virginia . . ., 1616. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1971. See especially the biographical sketch by John Melville Jennings.

Rountree, Helen. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Rountree, Helen. Young Pocahontas in the Indian World. Yorktown, VA: J & R Graphic Services, Inc., 1995.

Townsend, Camilla. Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/colo/Jthanout/Rolfe.html

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