Genealogy Pointers, Sept. 13, 2016

What Do We Know About Pocahontas and Her Descendants?
 Finding Your Canadian Roots
Portrait of Pocahontas. By Simon van de Passe
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
What Do We Know About Pocahontas and Her Descendants?
"She was of a 'Coulour browne, or rather tawnye,' and her age was somewhere between
twelve and fourteen. She probably was round-faced, with the fore part of her 'grosse' and
'thick' black hair 'shaven close,' and the very long 'thicker part' being 'tied in a pleate
hanging down' to her hips. Her hands almost certainly were 'pretty.' Her 'handsome
lymbes,' breast, 'slender armes' and face may well have been cunningly tattooed. And she
probably wore a headband or crownlet and copper-decorated beads and earrings, her
head and shoulders being covered with red colored powder 'mixed with the oyle of the
walnut, or Beares grease.' In winter this paint 'armes (in some measure) against the Cold'
and 'in Summer doth check the heat' while helping to defend 'from the stinging of
Muskeetoes which here breed aboundantly, amongst the marish whorts, and fenburies.'
"Her name was Matoaka, but they called her Pocahontas, the appellation possibly being
derived from the Algonkian adjective meaning 'playful, sportive, frolicsome, mischievous,
frisky.'
"She was a member of one of a confederacy of some thirty well-organized, thriving
agricultural and fishing tribes, who lived in approximately 160 villages widely scattered
over much of the lower section of the Chesapeake Bay, and had a total population in the
neighborhood of 9,000. And she was one of the many children of Powhatan, the
confederacy's overlord or supreme 'werowance.'"
Thus begins the late Stuart Brown's diminutive biography of the legendary Native
American princess who saved the life of Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame. Mr.
Brown, an attorney and antiquarian bookman by day, devoted much of his spare time to
recording everything that could be found out about Pocahontas and her progeny. His
biography, entitled Pocahontas, which occupies a mere 36 pages, uses only contemporary
or near-contemporary facts pertaining to Pocahontas's appearance, words, and actions. It
is fully documented and features a number of reproductions of engravings made of the
princess, her father, and scenes from early 17th-century Virginia.(For more information,
visit the following URL:
www.genealogical.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&item_number=9098.
Stuart Brown's concern for accuracy is reflected in his recounting of Pocahontas's final
years. These are the bare facts: In April 1614, Pocahontas was married to the English
gentleman John Rolfe, who had succeeded Thomas Dale as the secretary of the Virginia
Colony. Pocahontas bore Rolfe a son, Thomas, in late 1614 or early 1615. That year the
three of them, along with Pocahontas's sister Matchama and her husband and several
other Powhatan Indian men and women, sailed for England. Pocahontas died in 1617, on
the verge of returning to Virginia. In 1632 her son, Thomas Rolfe, married Elizabeth
Washington. Rolfe chose to return to Virginia three years later. His daughter, Jane, was
born in 1655, though the ancestry of Jane's mother is still a matter of conjecture. All of
Pocahontas's descendants trace back to Jane Rolfe and Colonel Robert Bolling, who were
married in 1675.
The descendants of Princess Pocahontas, through her son Thomas Rolfe and through the
marriage of Rolfe's daughter, Jane, and Colonel Robert Bolling, number in the tens of
thousands and encompass numerous lines of the colonial Virginia gentry. Stuart Brown's
attention to detail is most evident in his grand opus, Pocahontas' Descendants, a multivolume genealogy spanning 20 years that attempts to account for that progeny.
Pocahontas' Descendants: A Revision, Enlargement and Extension of the List as Set Out
by Wyndham Robertson in His Book, 'Pocahontas and Her Descendants' (1887) was
published in 1985. It is the base volume to which Stuart Brown and his associates at the
Pocahontas Foundation in Berryville, Virginia, ultimately published five sets of
Corrections and Additions. The base volume identifies in excess of 20,000 descendants of
Jane Rolfe and Robert Bolling. It is equipped with an Introduction to the Pocahontas line
containing a critical assessment of Wyndham Robertson's research, a bibliography of
sources, and an index in excess of 100 pages. Pocahontas' Descendants, the consolidated
book published by Genealogical Publishing Company in 1995, appends the two volumes of
Corrections and Additions of 1992 and 1994 to the base volume of 1985, resulting in a
consolidated in a work over 700 pages, with indexes containing over 30,000 names!
Third Corrections and Additions to Pocahontas' Descendants, published in 1997, is the
longest of the supplementary volumes, and it stands by itself.
The relatively small number of corrections and additions in the Fourth and Fifth
Corrections and Additions to Pocahontas' Descendants are available in a consolidated
paperback booklet first issued in 2004.
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Finding Your Canadian Roots
For many U.S. genealogy wayfarers, their journey includes a stop in
Canada. This is true for persons with and without French-Canadian
roots. For example, during the colonial wars for control of North
America, Canadians such as the Acadian French of Nova Scotia were
banished and compelled to take up new homes in places like New
England and Louisiana. Conversely, following England's defeat in the
American Revolution, thousands of people who were still loyal to the
Crown fled to Canada, sometimes leaving patriot family members
behind. During the 1840s and 1850s, many Famine-era Irish emigrants arrived at the port
of St. John, New Brunswick, because the fare was cheaper. Some of these same people
ultimately joined family members in the U.S. once they had accumulated the necessary
funds. Not surprisingly, living along the 3,000-mile border that separates the U.S. from its
northern neighbor are innumerable families who share common ancestries as a result of
their desire for greater economic, religious, or political freedom--in one country or the
other.
If you are currently researching your Canadian ancestors, we have a wonderful array of
resources available. The titles range from Angus Baxter's excellent how-to book In Search
of Your Canadian Roots, to an excellent account of immigration into the Canadian
Maritimes by Terrence M. Punch, to George E. Reaman's study of German-Canadian
(mostly Pietistic) settlements. Scroll down to see a sampling of our Canadian publications.
In Search of Your Canadian Roots. Third Edition
For both beginners and experienced researchers alike, this third edition of Angus Baxter's
noted guidebook gives common-sense tips on where to begin your research, how to work
backward in time from the known to the unknown, how to test your facts and avoid
common mistakes, and, ultimately, how to create a family tree. It discusses the great
migrations of Scots, Irish, English, Germans, Huguenots, Ukrainians, and Jews to
Canada; describes the records of the national archives in Ottawa; summarizes the
holdings of the LDS Church relating to Canada; and explores the vast nationwide record
sources such as census records and church registers. It also provides a province-byprovince survey of genealogical sources--in effect, a step-by-step guide to the records and
record repositories in each of the ten provinces and the Yukon and Northwest territories.
Yarmouth Nova Scotia Genealogies
Published between 1896 and 1910, George Brown's columns in the Yarmouth Herald
focused almost exclusively on New England families who migrated to Nova Scotia around
the time of the Revolutionary War, many of them descended from Mayflower colonists.
Brown's work had been badly neglected, owing to the scarcity of the newspaper; however,
Martha and Bill Reamy put together as complete a collection of columns as possible, reset
the type, and indexed the entire collection. The 186 articles in this consolidated volume
name as many as 60,000 individuals.
Genealogist's Handbook for Upper Saint John Valley Research
This impeccably prepared guidebook teaches us how to find ancestors on both the Maine
and New Brunswick sides of the Upper Saint John River Valley, a region that ultimately
became home to the indigenous Maliseets, Acadians, French-Canadians, Irish, a few
Scots, and a few (mostly English) Loyalists. The extant records of the valley (found in both
local and distant archives) extend from 1792 to the 20th century, and, following his
historical introduction, Mr. George L. Findlen devotes the bulk of his narrative to an
inventory of them. Separate chapters are devoted to each of the following record
categories: church registers (probably the most valuable of all records), vital records,
marriages, cemetery records, censuses, land records, will and probate documents,
newspapers, as well as the various record repositories themselves.
United Empire Loyalists. Enquiry into the Losses and Services in Consequence of Their
Loyalty. Evidence in Canadian Claims. Second Report of the Bureau of Archives for the
Province of Ontario. Two Volumes
This monumental work of 1,436 pages contains records of the claims for losses of over
1,200 persons who found it necessary to flee to Canada during and immediately after the
Revolutionary War. These notes contain a goldmine of biographical, historical, and
genealogical data. In general, we are given the claimant's name, his country or place of
origin, reason for emigrating, date of migration, place of residence in America,
occupation, names of family members and friends, location and value of confiscated
property, war service rendered, losses sustained, evidence of character, statements of
witnesses, notes of deeds and wills, and highlights of the claimant's experiences during
the war.
Guide to Quebec Catholic Parishes and Published Parish Marriage Records
The bulk of this work consists of county-by-county lists of parishes within the Province of
Quebec. All known Catholic parishes are listed to 1900. Each list gives the names of all the
parishes within that county, arranged in order of formation, with the date of the oldest
records for that parish. A reference letter and name after the parish indicate the compiler
and publisher of a marriage register for that parish, or whether the marriages for that
parish may be found in the important Loiselles Marriage Index.
North America's Maritime Funnel: The Ships that Brought the Irish, 1749-1852
Supported by a history of Irish emigration, with an account of the economic and social
causes of this historic upheaval, the book is built around a year-by-year listing of known
voyages between an Irish port and a harbor in the Maritimes, with maps showing the
movement of population from specific areas in Ireland to the Maritimes, and tables
providing port-by-port statistics. Scattered throughout the list of voyages are the names of
passengers--some gleaned directly from passenger lists, others from related sources such
as land records and newspaper accounts that by chance connect passengers to the ships,
while in other cases references are given to previously published passenger lists.
Nova Scotia Immigrants to 1867 [Volume I]
Col. and Mrs. Leonard H. Smith labored for more than a decade to construct this vast
index of heretofore widely scattered Nova Scotia immigrants from numerous archives in
North America and abroad. This a great tool for New England ancestral research as well,
whether the ancestor's origins are Scottish, Irish, English, German, or Loyalist.
The Trail of the Black Walnut
This is a superb piece of research on the little-known Pennsylvania-German connection in
the founding of Upper Canada. Following the American Revolution, Mennonites,
Dunkards, Moravians, Amish, Hutterites, and other "Plain Folk" migrated to Canada in
successive waves, settling in five main areas: Niagara (1776), Essex (1780), Eastern
Ontario (1784), York County (1793), and Waterloo (1800). This work recounts the story of
this settlement of Ontario and lists the names of the first recorded settlers, giving their
township and county of residence, date of settlement, nationality, and religion.