John Rolfe was one of the early English settlers of North America.
He is credited with the first successful cultivation of tobacco as an export crop in the Colony
of Virginia and is known as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan
Confederacy.
Biography Rolfe was born in Heacham, Norfolk, England
as the son of John Rolfe and Dorothea Mason, and was baptised on 6 May 1585.
At the time, Spain held a virtual monopoly on the lucrative tobacco trade.
Most Spanish colonies in the New World were located in southern climates more favourable
to tobacco growth than the English settlements, notably Jamestown.
As the consumption of tobacco had increased, the balance of trade between England and Spain
began to be seriously affected.
Rolfe was one of a number of businessmen who saw the opportunity to undercut Spanish imports
by growing tobacco in England's new colony in Virginia.
Rolfe had somehow obtained seeds to take with him from a special popular strain then being
grown in Trinidad and South America, even though Spain had declared a penalty of death
to anyone selling such seeds to a non-Spaniard.
Sailing with Third Supply to Virginia A project of the proprietary Virginia Company
of London, Jamestown had been established by an initial group of settlers on 14 May
1607.
This colony proved as troubled as earlier English settlements, and after two return
trips with supplies by Christopher Newport arrived in 1608, another larger than ever
relief fleet was dispatched in 1609, carrying hundreds of new settlers and supplies across
the Atlantic.
Heading the Third Supply fleet was the new flagship of the Virginia Company, the Sea
Venture, carrying Rolfe and his wife, Sarah Hacker.
The Third Supply fleet left England in May 1609 destined for Jamestown with seven large
ships, towing two smaller pinnaces.
In the southern region of the North Atlantic, they encountered a three-day-long storm, thought
to have been a severe hurricane.
The ships of the fleet became separated.
The new Sea Venture, whose caulking had not cured, was taking on water faster than it
could be bailed.
The Admiral of the Company, Sir George Somers, took the helm and the ship was deliberately
driven onto the reefs of Bermuda to prevent its foundering.
All aboard, 150 passengers and crew, and 1 dog, survived.
Most remained for ten months in Bermuda, subsequently also known as The Somers Isles, while they
built two small ships to continue the voyage to Jamestown.
A number of passengers and crew, however, did not complete this journey.
Some had died or been killed, lost at sea, or left behind to maintain England's claim
to Bermuda.
Because of this, although the Virginia Company's charter was not extended to Bermuda until
1612, the Colony at Bermuda dates its settlement from 1609.
Among those left buried in Bermuda were Rolfe's wife and his infant daughter, Bermuda Rolfe.
In May 1610, the two newly constructed ships set sail from Bermuda, with 142 castaways
on board, including Rolfe, Admiral Somers, Stephen Hopkins, and Sir Thomas Gates.
On arrival at Jamestown, they found the Virginia Colony almost destroyed by famine and disease
during what has become known as the Starving Time.
Very few supplies from the Third Supply had arrived because the same hurricane that caught
the Sea Venture badly affected the rest of the fleet.
Only 60 settlers remained alive.
It was only through the arrival of the two small ships from Bermuda, and the arrival
of another relief fleet commanded by Lord De La Warr on 10 June 1610 that the abandonment
of Jamestown was avoided and the colony survived.
After finally settling in—although his first wife, the English-born Sarah Hacker and their
child had died prior to his journey to Virginia—Rolfe began his long-delayed work with tobacco.
Orinoco tobacco: a cash crop In competing with Spain for European markets,
there was another problem beside the warmer climates the Spanish settlements enjoyed.
The native tobacco from Virginia was not liked by the English settlers, nor did it appeal
to the market in England.
However, Rolfe wanted to introduce sweeter strains from Trinidad, using the hard-to-obtain
Spanish seeds he brought with him.
In 1611, Rolfe is credited with being the first to commercially cultivate Nicotiana
tabacum tobacco plants in North America; export of this sweeter tobacco beginning in 1612
helped turn the Virginia Colony into a profitable venture.
Rolfe named his Virginia-grown strain of the tobacco "Orinoco", possibly in honour of tobacco
popularizer Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions in the 1580s up the Orinoco River in Guiana
in search of the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado.
The appeal of Orinoco tobacco was in its nicotine, and the conviviality of its use in social
situations.
His first harvest of four barrels of tobacco leaf was exported from Virginia to England
in March 1614, and soon, Rolfe and others were exporting vast quantities of the new
cash crop.
New plantations began growing along the James River, where export shipments could use wharfs
along the river.
In 1612, Rolfe established Varina Farms, a plantation along the James River about 30
miles upstream from Jamestown, and across the river from Sir Thomas Dale's progressive
development at Henricus.
Pocahontas
Rolfe married Pocahontas, daughter of the local Native American leader Powhatan on 5
April 1614.
A year earlier, Alexander Whitaker had converted Pocahontas to Christianity and renamed her
"Rebecca" when she had her baptism.
Rolfe agonised over the potential moral repercussions of marrying a "heathen," and wrote a long
letter to the governor requesting permission to wed her.
Richard Buck officiated their wedding.
Powhatan gave the newlyweds property just across the James River from Jamestown.
They never lived on the land, which spanned thousands of acres, and instead lived for
two years on Rolfe's plantation, Varina Farms, across the James River from the new community
of Henricus.
Their son Thomas was born on 30 January 1615.
Their marriage created a climate of peace between the Jamestown colonists and Powhatan's
tribes for several years; in 1615, Ralph Hamor wrote that "Since the wedding we have had
friendly commerce and trade not only with Powhatan but also with his subjects round
about us."[45] The land gifted by Powhatan was willed to
Rolfe's son Thomas, who in 1640 sold at least a portion of it to Thomas Warren.
Smith's Fort was a secondary Fort to Jamestown, begun in 1609 by John Smith.
John and Rebecca Rolfe travelled to England on the Treasurer, commanded by Samuel Argall,
in 1616 with their young son.
They arrived at the port of Plymouth on 12 June and Rebecca was widely received as visiting
royalty, but settled in Brentford.
However, as they were preparing to return to Virginia in March 1617, Rebecca became
ill and died.
Her body was interred in Gravesend's St George's Church.
Their two-year-old son Thomas survived, but was adopted to Sir Lewis Stukley and later
to John's brother, Henry Rolfe.
John and Tomocomo returned to Virginia.
Late life, death, heritage In 1619, Rolfe married Jane Pierce, daughter
of English colonist Captain William Pierce and Jane Eeles.
They had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1620, who married John Milner of Nansemond, Virginia
and died in 1635.
Rolfe died in 1622 after his plantation was destroyed in a Native American attack.
It remains unclear whether Rolfe died in the massacre or whether he died as a result of
illness.
His widow Jane married Englishman Captain Roger Smith three years later.
He was the son of John Smith and Thomasine Manning.
Rolfe's son with Pocahontas, Thomas, who grew up in England, married Elizabeth Washington
in September 1632 at St James's Church in Clerkenwell and they had a daughter Anne in
1633.
Elizabeth died shortly after Anne's birth.
Thomas returned to Virginia two years later, where he married Jane Poythress.
Her English parents were Francis Poythress and Alice Payton.
Thomas and his second wife had one child, Jane, who married Robert Bolling in 1675 and
had a son, John, in 1676.
She died later that same year.
Heritage and legacy The strain of tobacco cultivated by Rolfe
was the export cash crop that helped make the Virginia Colony profitable.
It was the mainstay of the farming plantations for generations.
Huge warehouses, such as those on Richmond's Tobacco Row, attest to its popularity.
Even almost 400 years later, tobacco figures prominently in Virginia's economy.
In eastern Virginia, State Route 31 is named the John Rolfe Highway.
It links Williamsburg with Jamestown, the southern entrance to the Colonial Parkway,
and via the Jamestown Ferry leads to the rich farming area of Surry County and Sussex County,
ending in Wakefield, Virginia.
John Rolfe Drive, in the town of Smithfield in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, connects
Battery Park Road with Magruder Road, and is named for Rolfe.
John Rolfe Middle School, in Henrico County, Virginia, one of Virginia's eight original
shires of 1634, is named for him.
Varina magisterial district in Henrico County is named for Rolfe's Varina Farms plantation,
where the tiny village was also the first county seat.
The abandoned corridor planned for State Route 288 in western Henrico County became a connector
street, rather than a limited-access highway.
It was named the John Rolfe Parkway.
Rolfe, Iowa, in Pocahontas County, Iowa is named for Rolfe.
Rolfe wrote in 1619 of the incidental introduction of African slaves to Virginia from a passing
ship, recording that "there came in a Dutch man-of-war that sold us twenty negars" on
31 August of that year.
In 1961, the Jamestown Foundation of the Commonwealth of Virginia offered a $500 award for "the
best historical information" on Rolfe's "appearance and mannerisms".
In popular culture Rolfe was portrayed by Robert Clarke in the
1953 low-budget film Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.
He was portrayed by John Stephenson in TV Reader's Digest 1955 episode "America's First
Great Lady".
Rolfe is portrayed by Christian Bale in the 2005 film The New World.
In the Disney 1998 direct-to-video animated film Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World,
he was voiced by Billy Zane.
In S.M.
Stirling's novel Conquistador, a fictional descendant and namesake of Rolfe son of Thomas
Rolfe, who in reality fathered only a daughter) founds a country called "New Virginia" after
opening a door between dimensions to a world where Europeans never discovered North America.
See also Notes
External links John Rolfe at Find a Grave
"John Rolfe's Letter to Sir Thomas Dale", 1614.
Living History Associates Ltd.
Rolfe Portrayed by Dick Cheatham