DESCENDANTS

Pocahontas Family Tree

Plain Text Descendants Chart

My Descent from Pocahontas

MATOAKA "POCAHONTAS" 1595?-1616
        m. John Rolfe 1585-1622
1. Thomas Rolfe 1615-16?? 
        m. Jane Poythress
2. Jane Rolfe 16??-1676 
        m. Col. Robert Bolling 1646-1709
3. Col. John Bolling 1676-1729  
        m. Mary Kennon
4. Elizabeth Bolling 1709-?     
        m. Dr. William Gay
5. William Gay                  
        m. Judith Scott
6. Neil Buchanan Gay, M.H.Delegates 9/3/1791-6/25/1864 
        m. Martha "Patsy" Talley 11/27/1795-4/28/1864
7. Neil Buchanan Gay, Jr. MD 2/6/1827-7/16/1906 
        m. Mary Bunn 8/15/1834-5/12/1921
8. William Bunn Gay 1858-12/24/1921 
        m. Georgie Lee Perkins
9. Mary (Constance) Gay 2/12/1895-8/28/1985 
        m. Richard Thomas Morenus 1893-1975
10. Richard Cousins Morenus 1/31/1929-
        m. Marjorie Rose Rutherford 3/21/1925-
11. DAVID RUTHERFORD MORENUS 6/20/1957-
        m. Linda Sue Stiber 3/3/1956-
12. Bennett Miles Morenus 9/11/1998-

Find Your Own Descent from Pocahontas

Dubious Pocahontas Descendants

• Jane Rolfe, sister of Thomas Rolfe and daughter of Pocahontas. No such person. Pocahontas had one son, Thomas Rolfe, and no daughters. The only Jane Rolfe was the daughter of Thomas. John Rolfe did have a couple of daughters by other wives. His first wife bore him Bermuda Rolfe, who died in infancy. His third wife bore him Elizabeth Rolfe; knowledge of Elizabeth after the age of four was lost with the destruction of early Henrico County records. Neither daughter was a Pocahontas descendant – it was John Rolfe's second wife who was Pocahontas.



• Extra children of Thomas Rolfe? Actually, there could have been. These stories are intriguing, and plausible to varying degrees. Only his daughter Jane Rolfe is undisputed, and there is very little documentation on her. There are proponents of a second daughter, Anne Rolfe, by what would have been Thomas' first wife in England, who married an Elwyn and had numerous descendants. Some items said to have belonged to Pocahontas, such as her earrings, were passed down in the family for years. That claim has been accepted by the Pocahontas Foundation.



• Jane Bolling, daughter of Jane Rolfe and Col. Robert Bolling, sister of Col. John Bolling, and later wife of Rev. James Clack. Sorry. There are plenty of Jane Bollings, but Col. John Bolling was the only child of Jane Rolfe. Rev. Clack certainly married someone who had his three children, but she wasn't the daughter of Col. Robert Bolling and Jane Rolfe. You can read her "non-biography" though.



• The "mysterious" Bollings a.k.a. "blue" Bollings, twelve extra children of Maj. John Bolling and Elizabeth Blair. Alas! A most numerous and enthusiastic branch of the family, but probably no relation. Maj. John Bolling and Elizabeth Blair had seven children who survived to adulthood, and another eleven who died as infants. The "blue" Bollings are yet another twelve children. That claim has been rejected by the Pocahontas Foundation. In those days, it took nine months to make a baby, so the "blue" Bollings must have had a different mother.

  Their seven actual children who had descendants: Thomas 1735-1804 John 1737-179? Robert 1738-1769 Mary 1744-? Sarah 1748-? Archibald 1750-? Anne 1752-?

  Eleven more children who died without issue: John 1 Archibald 1 Robert 1 Elizabeth 1 Sarah 1 Anne 1 Edward Elizabeth 2 Jane Rebecca Elizabeth 3

  The twelve "blue" Bollings are not considered their children: Meotaka William Elizabeth Jared Martha Dorothea Benjamin Jane Rodney Rolfe Powhatan James

  This is also shown in the graphic charts (see top of page). The "blue" Bollings are so called because they appeared "out of the blue" in 1963, in the book Of Whom I Came, From Whence I Came, by Judge Zelma Wells Price. The sources she used ultimately traced back to a family tree made by John Tarpley Bolling/Bolding in the 19th century. This family tree made both of his parents Pocahontas descendants, via the Bollings and the Randolphs, and created the "blue" Bollings as a side effect.

  If the "blue" Bollings are not descendants, then who are they? The Bolling Family Association has undertaken a DNA study to shed light on the ancestry of all Bollings in America. They coordinated DNA testing of men with the Bolling surname (including spelling variants), who trace their ancestry to various Bolling/Bowling/Bolen/Bouldin immigrants to the US. The test results show that the early Bollings divide into different family groups. Here are some groups important to the "blue" Bolling question:

  • Group 1. "Red" and "white" descendants of Robert Bolling (1646-1709). All Pocahontas descendants are in this group.
  • Group 5. The common ancestor in this group is farther back than the known immigrants. This group includes:
    • John Tarpley Bolding, grandson of William and Amelia
    • James Bolding, grandson of William and Amelia
    • Leonard D. Bolding, son of William
  • Group 3. This group includes:
    • Benjamin Bolling (1734-1823), in multiple lines, through his sons Jesse, Jeremiah, and Delaney.
    • Thomas Bouldinge 1584, a.k.a. "Thomas of the Swan". Apparently, Thomas Bouldinge landed in Kecoughtan, Virginia, (later renamed Elizabeth City) in 1610, aboard the "Swann". That was pretty early, ten years before the Mayflower.

  Conclusion: DNA testing agrees that the "blue" Bollings were not Pocahontas descendants. Also, they were not all siblings to each other.

  A word about Benjamin Bolling (spelling variant) in particular. Although a "blue" Bolling, he was a real pioneer who left numerous proud descendants. A monument was erected on his gravesite in Flat Gap, VA, by some of those proud descendants. It does little to dispel the myth that he was the child of John Bolling and Elizabeth Blair -- quite the reverse! Note, however, that it shows his birthplace as Wilkes County, North Carolina. Maj. John Bolling and Elizabeth Bland Blair lived nowhere near there. Barb Blair and Don Chesnut have been investigating Benjamin Bolling's genealogy.

  One of the other "blue" Bollings, Powhatan Bolling (b. 1754), probably existed only on paper. He is occasionally confused with a real Powhatan Bolling (1767-1803), a legitimate grandson of Maj. John and Elizabeth Bolling. This might be how he got on the chart in the first place, or he could just be there because of his name (along with Meotaka, obviously a misspelling of Matoaka, Pocahontas' name). Fred Hof has been looking into this.

• A few years ago, Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton made a fuss about wanting to exhume Pocahontas' body from England, and bring it back to America, to be returned to her ancestral tribal lands for a proper Indian burial, because he is her descendant. There are some problems with that.
  1. Pocahontas died a Christian Englishwoman, Lady Rebecca Rolfe, and so received the burial she wanted. Before colonization, the Powhatan Indians did not bury their dead, per se. Their modern descendants are mainly Baptist. Pocahontas (as Rebecca) was Anglican. She was baptised as an adult believer, but by Anglican rite, not by full immersion.
  2. Pocahontas' remains are no longer intact or identifiable. She was buried in a place of honor under the church floor, but when the church burned down and was rebuilt, all the bones that were under the floor were gathered together, and reburied in a single large grave, in the church cemetery. This grave contains a jumble of bones from many different people. An earlier effort failed to identify which skull was that of Pocahontas.
  3. I doubt that Wayne Newton is really a Pocahontas descendant. I have looked around for proof. According to his official website, Wayne Newton was born in 1942 in Norfolk, VA, to a Powhatan Indian/Irish father, and a Cherokee Indian/German mother. To the extent that this is true, he would not be descended from Pocahontas, whose descendants were almost uniformly Anglo, with some Scotch, into the 20th century. Mr. Newton may be a descendant of her father, the great Powhatan, and certainly has more Native American blood than most Pocahontas descendants. Email me a line of descent from Pocahontas to Wayne Newton, and I'll check it out. Until then, Wayne, you're dubious.

A legitimate claim should be backed up with original source material, such as legal documents, or mention by a contemporary historic source. Examples of original sources are county records, including birth certificates, marriage licences, death certifiates, wills, deeds, or court orders, military commissions, census records, or church baptismal records. Also, there may be contemporary letters to, from, or about the person in question, or journal entries, etc.. For example, in his letter to Queen Anne, Captain John Smith spoke of Nantaquas and Pocahontas as the son and daughter of Powhatan. This is the only mention I have ever found of Nantaquas, but it is much stronger proof than an entry in a family tree database, or even a published genealogy book that uses shaky sources.

The field of Pocahontas genealogy is pocketed with many little mysteries. There are many cases where original sources are missing, probably destroyed. That does not mean that any old story has equal merit, or the more it is repeated, the truer it becomes. Careful scrutiny of secondary sources can firm up or discredit many a theory.

Links to genealogy resources.

Links about descendants of Pocahontas.