The Bolling line (the "Red Bollings") is through John Rolfe and
Pocahontas:  Son Thomas' daughter Jane who Robert Bolling  (1675-1729).
Interestingly the "White Bollings" looked askance at the Red Bollings,
even though it descends from the same Robert Bolling's second wife,  Anne
Stith.

I suspect that Centre Hill in Petersburg can cite chapter and verse.



> Good Morning To All Virginians those who love Virginia History
>
>
>
> I need some help with resolving a question on the descendants of a Native
> Virginian.
>
>
>
> The NGS Conf for 2007 was held in Richmond and the NGS Banquet speaker was
> Dick Cheatham. He purported to be a 14th generation descendant of
> Pocahontas
> and spoke in costume and character of John Rolfe of Jamestown, second
> husband of Pocahontas. John Rolfe and Pocahontas had one child, a son,
> named
> Thomas Rolfe.
>
>
>
> First Assumption: Mr. Cheatham's lineage is via Thomas Rolfe. I find no
> writings indicating that Pocahontas had any children by her first marriage
> to an Indian from her tribe.
>
>
>
>
>
> I am now reading *Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough;Three Indian Lives
> Changed by Jamestown* by Helen C. Rountree, University of Virginia Press,
> 2005.
>
>
>
> I got to this text by the numerous referrals to it in *The River Where
> America Began; A Journey Along the James* by Bob Deans, Rowman &
> Littlefield
> Publishers , Inc., 2007. In this text he was quite complimentary of the
> effort by Helen C. Rountree on the Pocahontas book.
>
>
>
> Now for a lengthy quote from the Rountree book.
>
>
>
> “Thomas Rolfe grew up in England as an Englishman, though he retained a
> sympathy for his mother’s folk. His passage to Virginia was paid in 1635,
> when he was nineteen or twenty, by his stepmother’s father, and he took
> his
> place in Anglo-Virginian society as a landowner, his father’s heir…. His
> later career is shadowy, and he was dead by 1681.
>
> Nobody in Virginia, elsewhere in America, or in England seems to have
> taken
> more interest in either Pocahontas or her descendants until well after
> 1800,
> when the aristocratic Randolph family’s oral tradition of descent from her
> (through the Bolling family) began to be publicized. Before that, none of
> her descendants’ ancestry was any more the subject of record making that
> that of most other Virginians. …
>
> Consequently, the tens of thousands of people proudly claiming descent
> from
> Pocahontas today----or asking genealogists to prove such descent for
> them---cannot actually trace a line of authentic, contemporary documents
> stretching back to Thomas Rolfe. No one can.[Here Ms. Rountree references
> Moore and Slatten, 1985, Magazine of Virginia Genealogy 23 (3):3-16]
> Elements of Pocahontas are out there in the gene pool, allright, but they
> probably dwell in a great many people with whom the *blue bloods* would
> rather not associate”.
>
>
>
> So first did we/do we believe that Mr. Cheatham is truly a descendant of
> Pocahontas when he was booked for the NGS Conference? One would think
> since
> he was speaking of his lineage to a genealogical society he would have
> been
> vetted to some degree.  I personally don’t remember him using any
> qualifiers
> on his lineage.
>
>
> Secondly does anyone have scholarly references that have been vetted they
> could share with us.
>
>
>
> No! I do not think I was a descendant. No! I do not have a client that
> thinks they are a descendant. The interest in this book was raised by the
> many references to it in the *The River…* and I am from Virginia and love
> Virginia history. Now I have what I perceive as a contradiction in facts.
>
>
>
> I look forward to your comments.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Douglas Burnett
> Satellite Beach
> FL
>
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>

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