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Jane (Unknown) Rolfe (abt. 1630 - 1679)

Jane Rolfe formerly [surname unknown] aka Poythress [uncertain]
Born about in Jamestown, Colony of Virginiamap
Daughter of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]
[sibling(s) unknown]
Wife of — married 1644 in Jamestown, James City, Virginiamap
Descendants descendants
Died at about age 49 in Charles City County, Colony of Virginiamap
Profile last modified | Created 11 Sep 2010
This page has been accessed 5,662 times.
US Southern Colonies.
Jane (Unknown) Rolfe resided in the Southern Colonies in North America before 1776.
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Jane (Unknown) Rolfe is currently protected by the Native Americans Project for reasons described below.
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NOTE: "Poythress" has been added as an Other Last Name solely for the purposes to aid searching and prevent duplicates from being created. See below for discussion of this surname.

Biography

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Jane was a Virginia colonist.

This profile represents the wife of Thomas Rolfe. See Research Notes below for a discussion of her disputed origins.

She married Thomas Rolfe and had one child by him:

  1. Jane Rolfe

She apparently died in Jan 1679 in Charles City, Charles, Virginia Colony.[citation needed]

Research Notes

The origins of the wife of Thomas Rolfe are not confirmed. She is said by some that she was daughter of Francis Poythress and Mary Sloman.[citation needed] But it's not even certain that she was even a Poythress.

Moore and Slatten[1] traced the suggestion that his wife was a Poythress back to a comment by W. G. Stanard in "Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents", in Virginia Historical Magazine (I, 1894, 446-447):

"His wife is said to have been a Miss Poythress (if so, doubtless a daughter of Francis Poythress."
This is repeated in Stuart Brown et al (1995), Pocahontas' Descendants, (1995), said to be the most updated version of POCAHONTAS' DESCENDANTS: A Revision, Enlargement and Extension of the List as Set out by Wyndham Robertson in His Book Pocahontas and Her Descendants (1887)

According to Moore and Slatten, Stanard cited as evidence handwritten notes on the flyleaf of a copy of A Complete Collection of All the Laws of Virginia Now in Force Carefully Copied from the Assembled Records (London, 168[?], now in the Library of Virginia. Moore and Slatten state:

"Interestingly, Thomas Rolfe here is recorded as married to a 'Miss Payers'. We recall that in John Rolfe's will the name of his third wife is spelt Pyers (Peirce) and that it was John who married a "Jane".

Here again a Bolling descendant confused the son with his father. Not recognizing the name 'Payers' as another variant of Peirce, someone searched the records for a name beginning with 'P' and having a 'y' in the first syllable. Francis Poythress lived in adjacent Charles City County and his name ended in s!

Wyndham Robertson, a Bolling descendant, wrote in Pocahontas Alias Mataoka and Her Descendants [2]

"I adopt "Jane Poythress" (not "Poyers") whom he is stated in the Bolling Memoirs to have married in England."

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.' ... 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 Thomas Rolfe may have been remains an unanswered question

Sources

  1. Elizabeth Vann Moore and Richard Slatten, "The Descendants of Pocahontas: An Unclosed Case," in Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, XXIII, no.3, pp.3-16, cited by John Frederick Dorman, in Adventurers of Purse and Person, 4th ed., Vol. 3, p.26, fn23-24.
  2. Robertson, Wyndham. Pocahontas Alias Mataoka and Her Descendants. Randolph & English, Richmond, VA. 1887. p 30. Digitized at InternetArchive at Poythress
  • Virginia Genealogical Society Quarterly
  • Find A Grave: Memorial #30442370 for Jane Poythress Rolfe (memorial only, no headstone photo). NOTE: Her memorial incorrectly lists the Poythress maiden name.
  • Family knowledge




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Comments: 28

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update - merge completed

Poythress-252 and Unknown-503909 appear to represent the same person because: a note on Unknown-503909 was ineffective. Please merge.

Note: Poythress has been added as an Other Last Name solely for the purposes to aid searching and prevent duplicates from being created. See below for discussion of this surname.

posted by Liz (Noland) Shifflett
edited by Liz (Noland) Shifflett
Should we add "Poythress" as an Other Last Name to try to forestall duplicates?
posted by Kathie (Parks) Forbes
I wondered about that idea too but afraid it would still mislead (historically?)
posted by Maggie N.
I've added it and will add a notation at the top.
posted by Jillaine Smith
I woudl also like to remove the attached family tree which erroneously continues the Poythress pedigree.
posted by Jillaine Smith
I agree, it's very misleading - people see a tree and assume it must be correct
posted by Kathie (Parks) Forbes
Polythress-5 and Unknown-503909 appear to represent the same person because: Duplicate profiles for the same wife -- her last name is not known/confirmed.
Aren’t her parents Poythress-5 and Sloman-1?
posted by B. Hines
Theory only, not proven. Many have concluded that “Poythress” was not her name.
posted by Kathie (Parks) Forbes
B. Hines, the controversy and confusion about her surname is explained under "Research Notes" above.
posted by Jillaine Smith
I thought her name was Poythress, a cousin had had her name as Peachy Poythress. For my records I also put her as Jane if she had been named for her mother. I am uncertain, just Peachy was used in family records that I'd gotten.
posted by Gail Smith
Adventurers of Purse and Person, Dorman, Vol. 3 p. 26 references the above article, so he agreed that there was no "Jane Poythress" wife of Thomas. He lists Thomas as wife unknown.

"Moore shows that the often repeated identification of his [Thomas'] wife as Miss Poyers, who was then mistakenly assumed to be Jane Poythress, resulted from assigning to Thomas the third wife of his father (Poyers being a varient of Pierce).

posted by Kathie (Parks) Forbes
Poythress-123 and Unknown-503909 appear to represent the same person because: Jane Poythress represents the wife of Thomas Rolfe. Her maiden name is not known.
posted by Jillaine Smith
Hi! The Native Americans Project is a co-manager but is not displaying a project box (which is causing a database error). Does the project want to be a co-manager or would it rather be moved to the trusted list?

Thanks!

posted by Liz (Noland) Shifflett
Thanks for catching this. I've added the NA project's adjunct box, since the normal NA project box would not work in this case.
posted by Jillaine Smith
Most modern authors seem to agree that "Poythress" is both undocumented and probably erroneous.
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Kathie (Parks) Forbes
Virginia project, shouldn't we change her LNAB to Unknown?
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Jillaine Smith
probably so - see Jeanne Aloia's 2015 G2G post: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/140057/who-were-the-parents-of-jane-poythress-rolfe-poythress-6 (which gives a good history of how she became a Poythress... Short answer: a descendant adopted her).
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Liz (Noland) Shifflett
Great; thanks, Liz. I'm going in...
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Jillaine Smith
And I've detached the parents. Again.
posted by Jillaine Smith
Poythruss-1 and Poythress-6 appear to represent the same person because: New member accidentally creating duplicates
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Jillaine Smith
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rolfe#cite_note-10 for argument that THERE NEVER WAS ANY SUCH PERSON as Jane Poythress, period.

To summarize, Rolfe is known to have married Jane Pierce, whose father is known to be in the colony at that time. Pierce had alternate phoentic spelling Pyers/Payers.

According to The Descendants of Pocahontas: An Unclosed Case", by Elizabeth Vann Moore and Richard Slatten, Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, XXIII, no.3, pp.3–16, cited by John Frederick Dorman, Adventurers of Purse and Person, 4th ed., Vol. 3, p.26, fn23-24...

...somebody failed to understand Jane Pyers as Pierce, and instead mis-identified a ficticious person Jane Poyhtress.

Suggest the owner of this profile delete it. Or at the very least add Rolfe's *actual* wives to the profile.

posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Isaac Taylor
Can somebody summarize the state of affairs for this person? I'd be happy to read a dispassionate summary of what few sources we have, and the general folklore both.

Seems like we ought to

a) figure out if Jane Poythress actually married Rolfe

b) who her mother was (Sloman vs Payton)

c) prove the above with non-internet jibjab research sources

d) update this profile among others to clarify

Is anyone working on this? :-)

posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Isaac Taylor
Rolfe-1251 and Poythress-6 appear to represent the same person because: same person
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by [Living McQueen]
Poythress-127 and Poythress-112 appear to represent the same person because: same person
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by [Living McQueen]
Poythress-127 and Poythress-6 appear to represent the same person because: same person
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by [Living McQueen]
[deleted]
Maggie

Does not appear to be much documentation for Peyton or Sloman.

posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by [deleted]
Isn't her mother ALICE PEYTON ?
posted on Poythress-6 (merged) by Maggie N.

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Categories: Virginia Colonists | Charles City County, Virginia Colony | Native American Adjunct