Addressing Pocahontas’ alleged connection to Poythress

Extracted from a message posted to the Poythress mailing list on 6/14/2010 by Barbara Poythress Neal

I attempt below to correct the many-generations misinterpretation about Pocahontas having a connection to the Poythress family. The alleged proof of Pocahontas’ son Thomas Rolfe marrying a Poythress girl was misinterpreted and has been much quoted and passed down; even my own grandfather had heard it and repeated it as if it was gospel. Please bear with the below, more factual, explanation of how the misinterpretation apparently happened.

An extensive look at the alleged proof was done in the August 1985 issue of the Virginia Genealogical Society’s quarterly — Magazine of Virginia Genealogy [below abbreviated “MVG”], Vol.23 Number 3, appearing on pages 3-16 in the article “The Descendants of Pocahontas: An Unclosed Case” by Elizabeth Vann Moore and the esteemed Richard Slatten. Their article included on p.14 a photo of the original flyleaf of a book that had been the alleged proof of that marriage.

That copy of the flyleaf, however, shows the name of the wife of Pocahontas’ son Thomas as “Miss Payers” — Please be aware that Payers, as well as Pyers, were then-alternate spellings of the surname “Peirce” — say them aloud and draw out the diphthong of the pronunciation, and you can detect that.

After Pocahontas’ death in England in March 1617, her widower John Rolfe left his infant son Thomas to be placed in the care of a brother and returned to Virginia and a 3rd marriage. About 1619 John Rolfe married his 3rd wife, Jane Peirce, daughter of Lieut. William Peirce. They had a daughter, Elizabeth born in 1620. When her father, John Rolfe drafted and signed his will 10 March 1621 [old style date; 1622 by the current calendar], he spelled his wife’s maiden name “Pyers” as he commended his two small children to the care of her father, Lt. Pyers, gentleman.

The mis-interpretation that promoted “Poythress” instead of Payers/Pyers/Peirce came from Wyndham Robertson, who was a Bolling descendant, who consulted some hand-written sketchy notations regarding Bolling genealogy, made over several generations, on the flyleaf of a book held in the Bolling library, some of which marks were crossed out attempting to correct them.

That flyleaf was in a book (Purvis’s “A Complete Collection of All the Laws of Virginia” published in 1684) which book was held by the Bolling family, including Robert Bolling, Jr., who was born 25 January 1682, per an entry on the flyleaf.

In the MVG article [with my own square bracketed comments; parentheses were in the article] on page 13 -15, preceding and following the photo of the flyleaf on p.14, it is noted re this man, Robert Bolling, Jr, “He was son of Anne Stith and made no claim of descent from Pocahontas. On the opposite page [near his birth entry] appears the notation ‘Ex libris, Robert Bolling, jun: 1704.’ Someone else later wrote after the birthdate on the flyleaf ‘our grt grt gnd father’ mistaking son for father. Still later, someone realizing the mistake, crossed out the claim of parenthood. That person, however, let stand the sketchy chart of the descent and descendants of John Bolling. The annotator was obviously a descendant of John, for the descendants of Robert knew they were not descended from Pocahontas. Interestingly, Thomas Rolfe here [in the sketchy chart] is recorded as married to a ‘Miss Payers.’ We recall that in [Thomas’ father] John Rolfe’s will the name of his [John’s] third wife was spelled Pyers (Peirce) and that it was John who married a ‘Jane.’ Here again a Bolling descendant confused a son with his father. Not recognizing the name ‘Payers’ as another variant Peirce, someone searched the records for a name beginning with ‘P’ and having a ‘y’ in the first syllable. A Francis Poythress [also spelled Poythers in some records of the 1600s] lived in adjacent Charles City County and his name ended in ‘s!'”

From the same MVG article, p.12: “W.G. Stanard, in his 1894

“Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents,” in Virginia Historical Magazine, (Vol. I, 1894, pp.446-7) comments on the Rolfe family and on Thomas Rolfe’s posterity “His wife is said to have been a Miss Poythress (if so doubtless a daughter of Francis Poythress), and he had one child, Jane, who married Colonel Robert Bolling, of Kippax [plantation name], Prince George [County, Virginia].”

Stanard apparently got his above “said to have” marriage for Thomas, from Wyndham Robertson a few years earlier. The MVG article, near top of p.15: Wyndham Robertson, a Bolling descendant, wrote [on p.30 of his 1887 volume] Pocahontas Alias Matoaka and Her Descendants (Richmond, 1887):

“I adopt ‘Jane Poythress’ (not Poyers), whom he is stated in the ‘Bolling Memoirs’ to have married in England.” [MVG article continues:] He added in justification of his charming ‘adoption’ of an ancestress, “no such name as Poyers is anywhere known … the family of Poythress was already settled in Virginia.”

To quote the 1985 MVG article a little further down p.15: “The result has been the acceptance of a non-existent personage, ‘Jane Poythress’ in the Bibles of Virginia genealogy as the bona fide ancestress of many illustrious Virginians. Who the wife (or wives) of [John Rolfe’s son] Thomas Rolfe may have been remains an unanswered question.”

With best regards in your own Poythress-huntings, with hope that we’ll all better interpret our own Poythress lines than some have done through history – Barbara