Need this person detached Pocahontas descendancy

+15 votes
1.1k views

Attention "Descendants of Pocahontas" project:

Rumor has it that Pocahontas will be the target of a Connection Finder soon (if not already).

Descendants of Michael Pendergrass and his wife Rebecca might get all excited about a claim to Pocahontas through Rebecca, who is currently claimed to be daughter of Col Robert Thomas Bolling and known descendant of Pocahontas Jane Rolfe.

But Jane had only one child-- John Bolling-- and so cannot be the mother of Rebecca who married Michael Pendergrass.  

That connection should be severed so Pendergrass descendants don't get all excited when the Connection Finder with Pocahontas gets going...

Thanks!

WikiTree profile: Rebecca Pendergrass
in Genealogy Help by Jillaine Smith G2G6 Pilot (890k points)
edited by Jillaine Smith
Ugh! There has been some incorrect merges down along the Bolling lines too. I will correct asap.
After discussion about problems with the profile, the previous profile manager of Rebecca Jane (Bolling) Pendergrass has kindly allowed me to adopt the profile. I am very aware that no descendant of "Pocahontas" married Michael Pendergrass. I hope to have this fixed this morning.
By the way, the Pendergrass descendants have been "all excited" for a while now. The link to Pocahontas is a widespread myth. Many efforts to eradicate it have failed. People just want to believe that. I expect those links will be recreated soon.
That's the purpose of project protection-- to prevent spurious (and mythological ) parents from being attached.  Seems completely the role of the Pocahontas project to prove, debunk, detach and protect profiles.
Outstanding!  Thank you all for doing such a great job on the tough stuff.
FYI  https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-pocahontas-3529957 per Studies  of Linda Ortland-3 Larson
What I am wondering about is why people give John Bolling the middle name of Fairfax? I have never seen any source documentation that his middle name was Fairfax .??? just wondering why this is,, was his plantation called Fairfax?

thanks
Sherlock Holmes said, when you've eliminated the impossible, what's left must be the truth.

Well obviously it's impossible that people would just make these things up, etc, so I'm forced to the conclusion that they're the work of fairies.
Wendy,

Thanks for the question. I've edited the original post to remove the reference to "Fairfax" as a middle name.

3 Answers

+11 votes
 
Best answer
Thanks so much for spotting that one, Jillaine !
by Maggie N. G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)
selected by Keith Hathaway
I disconnected her.
Thanks for disconnecting Rebecca Jane (Bolling) Pendergrass. The previous profile manager has kindly allowed me to adopt the profile and I hope to fix the problems this morning.
You're welcome! (I think...)

Pocahontas' father - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Powhatan-1

is also a mess. Among other things, bunch of broken links under "See also:"

A bunch of narrative that is really about John Smith and Pocahontas...

A slew of wives and children, but no clear source for where these wives and children come from.

There's a big warning sign at the top saying not to touch, so I didn't. But it's a mess (and if you're going to be highlighting Pocahontas....)
Should I remove that DO NOT EDIT notice? It seem like if it was removed, it could revert back to it's even worse mess.....

It is known that Powhatan had many wives but what their names were, etc...I do not see how they could have been documented.

Speaking of Powhatan, this Pocahontas thread from yesterday caused me to discover some bizarre mythology (bizarre to me at least; some of the rest of you might be familiar with it) that marries Shawnee to Powhatans and Powhatans to Cherokees (with at least one Englishman in the mix) in the early 1600s.

Thomas Pasmere Carpenter is a complete myth, debunked many times but still on Wikitree.  One of the reasons I am no longer a member since I just can't deal with all the mythical Cherokee lines that no one will give up or correct.  I posted comments, added links to actual documentation, sent private messages, all to no avail and accusations of unfriendliness and unwillingness to collaborate.  How do you collaborate on mythological 'people'?
Maybe this heightened visibility will help us to ensure that Thomas Pasmere Carpenter gets appropriately marked as mythical and can't be added to people's ancestries.
Start dismantling myths around Pocahontas, you won't have much left.
I did some minor work on Thomas Pasmere Carpenter (Jeanie had already done some great work there) but it's a HUGE can of worms and the Native American / Pocahontas project needs to decide if it really wants to tackle myths. I see its template all over the place but not much evidence that it's into debunking myths.

It's going to mean confronting individuals who will be very unhappy to see their lines to mythological Native Americans broken.

Highlighting Pocahontas in the Relationship finder is going to stir this up. Heck. It already is.
+7 votes
Argh!!! Yesterday, someone  started a whole new Pocahontas line (Powhatan-264). I have initiated merges with Pocahontas, John Rolfe and Thomas Rolfe, but there are many more that need merging.
by Jeanie Roberts G2G6 Pilot (139k points)
Looks like I opened Pandora's box...

Sorry, folks.
Thanks for doing it. You beat me to it by about 10 minutes.
Jeanne, I am no Native American reader nor do that genre of genealogy but I will attempt those merges, thanks ! Jillaine, it's good you saw all the flaws. Thank you, Bennet, for taking care of Rebecca.
Thanks, I sent a message to the person creating the new profiles and asked her to cease and desist.
Anyone working on the early Jamestown period should refer to Martha McCartney's "Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635" available as an e-book and hard copy.  She has catalogued virtually every individual mentioned in a document of that period and location, including Native Americans, and includes all the citations for the original documents.  There is no documentary evidence for any Native American person or event in the Jamestown area prior to the arrival of the English in 1607.
Jeanie, I've also protected her and added her to our "watchlist". She's another candidate for people of European origin who've been claimed to be NA.
+2 votes
Pocahontas only had 1 child his name is Thomas Rolfe. Thomas was born January 1615. Thomas and his wife, Jane Poythress had a daughter Jane Rolfe that married Colonel Robert Bolling. They had a son John  Bolling. John  Bolling married Mary Kennon. This John Bolling also had a son John born 1700-1757 he married 1st Elizabeth Lewis and 2nd Elizabeth Blair. My Benjamin Bolling is the son of John and Elizabeth Blair. My DNA shows American Indian. I have tested with other known Pocahontas descendants which is positive.
by Nancy Osborn G2G Rookie (280 points)
edited by Nancy Osborn

Benjamin is in wikitree with disputed parentage noted in the bio

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bolling-79

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