Wednesday, November 20, 2013

The Red, White...and Blue Decendants of Pocahontas

It is not unusual to find Red and White descendants of Native American ancestors - particularly if it is a famous character - like Pocahontas, but this is my first encounter of a group called "Blue" descendants.
As I had promised, I have been working on the line that led from the famous Indian princess to my family of coalminers. I have collected census records, birth, death, and marriage certificates. Along the way I have come to appreciate military pension requests and requests for membership in the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution and have found them to be a wealth of information.
So, I am carefully documenting each generation of ancestors in this line to be able to prove that we are, indeed, descendants of the "Guardian Angle of Virginia". That is, until today, when I came across this "new" term - Blue descendants.
Note to all new and inexperienced genealogists: This is why, as much fun as it is to gallop through the  pages of Ancestry.com and other family history pages, when it comes down to it, you really must do your own research and find official documents to prove the lines we follow are actual.
As you might imagine, a red line descendant is the blood line of an Indian (in this case) and a white line descendant is from a marriage of another time (before or after) to a European or non-Indian spouse. However, in this case there is a third option - who knew?
It seems that, first of all, I should have started at the top and worked my way down rather than the other way around. But, secondly, that Pocahontas and John Rolfe had a son (their only child), Thomas Rolfe, who married Jane Poythress and they had only one child. Their daughter, Jane Rolfe, married Col. Robert Bolling. The children from this union became known as the "Red Bollings" - the direct line from our famous princess.
Col. Bolling married, secondly, Anne Stith and the children from this marriage became known as the "White Bollings" - not directly related to the princess.
Col. Robert and Jane Rolfe had a son named Col. John Bolling who married Nancy Kennon and had at least 6 kids and one of those was Maj. John Bolling - the (military) force was strong with this family...
Anyway, Yoda, this is where things get ... interesting or frustrating depending on how you look at it.
Maj. John Bolling and his wife, Elizabeth Blair continued the "red" line and had as many as 18 children (according to one source) but most of them - maybe 11- died young.
Then there is this third group who also claim to be descended from this marriage which, if true, would make the couple the proud parents of 30 children!
It seems that there was a book published about the descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe and after the publication of said book there suddenly appeared this group of people complaining that their ancestors should have been included in the list of the children of John Bolling and Elizabeth Blair. Since they appeared "out of the blue", they became known as the "Blue Bollings".
The problem with this group is that they do not appear in the will of John Bolling or in letters or papers written by one of the sons of John Bolling. Some of them may not exist at all. But at the present time or in the most recent writings I have seen, there is still little, if any, evidence to substantiate their claims.  
They may have lived near or even with the family in question. Some may be illegitimate children of one of the parents.They may have been close relatives that were being taken care of by the family. One writer has said that they may even have been orphans that were cared for by the family. At this point no one really knows or can prove it either way.
My 6th GGrandfather, Maj. Benjamin Bolling, when I found him, was listed as a son. But, alas, he is in the list of the Blue Bollings and not in the blood line of the famous Indian Princess after all. We know he was a real person. He is a historical figure who was a famous pioneer who settled in Flat Gap which became Wise Co. Va. He was quite a colorful character whose story will probably be my next post on this wonderful site.

So take heart family members and stay tuned. We may or may not be in the direct line of Pocahontas, but there are plenty of colorful and interesting stories to tell about brave, intrepid pioneers, warriors, soldiers, and Indian Chiefs who have all helped make the words "red, white and blue" famous and a proud statement in our heritage.

22 comments:

  1. I enjoy your blog, well, up until I found the repeated reference of "princess" when speaking of Pocahontas.
    Outside of the world of Disney, it is a well established fact that Native Americans did not have royalty. That is strictly a "white" thing.
    Don't mean to be a b***h, but it really burns me when I hear "princess" being used in reference to ANY NA person. It's something that makes white or part white folks seem like they are desperately reaching for something that doesn't exist, not to mention how insulting it is to actual NA persons.

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    1. I have a different opinion because they also say there is no Cherokee panther clan and there was because I am from it.I've been doing ancestor searching and did a DNA test at ftdna and I'm afraid there was a time period where the Indian chiefs picked and referred to one daughter as a princess and she was one of them. You have to understand first that Christopher Columbus didn't discover america and there were a lot of French colonies here and Scottish and Spanish from mexico to Canada.my French ancestors had trade relationships even marriages to Indians and lived amongst each other. They adopted each others ways or some of them and that's how and why Cherokee and etc. Tribes referred to themselves as clans like the Scottish did at one time period. Even a lot of Indian languages adopted words letters etc from Hebrew and other languages.its all true check it out. Pocahantus was named princess and her real name by her father chief powhatten.of course it didn't hold the same distinction that the English kings princesses did of course but there was a time period of Indian so called princesses
      So don't get too mad okay? And yes they weren't the same as English totality of course and just for the record I have several lines in my family descended from the powhattens shorts,clarkson Perkins Mullins bland and more and my branch were the panther clan too.fact

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    2. I have a different opinion because they also say there is no Cherokee panther clan and there was because I am from it.I've been doing ancestor searching and did a DNA test at ftdna and I'm afraid there was a time period where the Indian chiefs picked and referred to one daughter as a princess and she was one of them. You have to understand first that Christopher Columbus didn't discover america and there were a lot of French colonies here and Scottish and Spanish from mexico to Canada.my French ancestors had trade relationships even marriages to Indians and lived amongst each other. They adopted each others ways or some of them and that's how and why Cherokee and etc. Tribes referred to themselves as clans like the Scottish did at one time period. Even a lot of Indian languages adopted words letters etc from Hebrew and other languages.its all true check it out. Pocahantus was named princess and her real name by her father chief powhatten.of course it didn't hold the same distinction that the English kings princesses did of course but there was a time period of Indian so called princesses
      So don't get too mad okay? And yes they weren't the same as English totality of course and just for the record I have several lines in my family descended from the powhattens shorts,clarkson Perkins Mullins bland and more and my branch were the panther clan too.fact

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    3. Check out my eBook / Book Pocahontas to Benjamin Bolling at: http://thebaldwinstories.wix.com/author-blog

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    4. The daughters of Chiefs sometimes known as War Chiefs, like Joseph Brant for instance, were the equivalent of, or even more important than European princesses. Sometimes, white men closely associated with the Chiefs married their daughters. A brother of my many times great grandfather, William Jones, Augustus Jones married the daughters of 2 Chiefs, a Mohawk and a Mississauga. He was married to them simultaneously and his grandson became tribal leader. Peter E. Jones.

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  3. This article was interesting. :) http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/melungeon/27981/

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  4. This article was interesting. :) http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/melungeon/27981/

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  5. Melungeons are Indian mixed with Portuguese or black ancestry and are just as much Indian as everyone else its just most don't get recognized so there's a whole bunch of history out there for native american ancestry that isn't basic text book. You should read up and research it when you can.very educational

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  6. Melungeons are Indian mixed with Portuguese or black ancestry and are just as much Indian as everyone else its just most don't get recognized so there's a whole bunch of history out there for native american ancestry that isn't basic text book. You should read up and research it when you can.very educational

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    1. The word Melungeon is a pejorative (insult) originally applied by "non-Melungeons" (in other words, whites) to those with multi-racial, non-white characteristics (dark skin, wide noses, coarse black hair, etc.). While there is no doubt today that some who self-identify as Melungeon may truly have been descended from Negros, Turks, Moors, Portuguese, Native American or other ethnicity, there is no one single group which can lay claim to the title "Melungeon". There are actually over 200 socio-ethnic groupings in America which have at one time or another been characterized as "Melungeon". Even the origins of the word are controversial. One, to which I subscribe, insists that the word melungeon is an anglicized version of the French word, mélange, which means mixed (as in mixed race). The word was a veiled insult to those of mixed race (much like how Negroes were called 'colored'). Early in America's history, the Law of Primogeniture was common. That meant that the first born son inherited everything. Second sons usually got nothing and therefore went into the priesthood or military (if they were lucky) or worked the farmstead of the older brother. Some struck out on their own. Within the Bowling/Bolling/Boling/Bollen ancestry there are several known and proven cases where 'second sons' went among the Native Americans as traders. Because of the relationship the Bowling/Bolling/Boling/Bollen family had with the Powhatans, they were afforded special treatment and often assimilated with the Native Americans. During the French-Indian Wars, Lieutenant George Washington made use of some of them as guides and emissaries (sometimes referred to as 'half kings'). Intermarrying within the tribes, and having no real property of their own, they were often not documented and counted as "Other People of Color". Never fully belonging either to white society nor being fully integrated into that of the Native Americans, these 'men and women without a country' migrated along the same route as America's expansion into the west, from Virginia, to North and South Carolina to Tennessee and north to Kentucky and south to Alabama. Interestingly my own clan, descended from Samuel Bolling (another Blue Bolling), seemed to move into these areas at almost the same time as every treaty signed between the United States and the various Native American tribes.

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    2. NOTE: Lieutenant George Washington should have read Lieutenant Colonel George Washington.

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    3. Melungeon definition, a member of a people of mixed white, black, and American Indian ancestry living in the southern Appalachians. Some might find your writing to be insulting. I don't need to have pejorative explained nor the Law of Primogeniture. Those a few generations post Melungeon do not have the physical characteristics that you described. Matoaka often called Pocahontas (nickname) and later Rebecca Rolfe is my 12th great grandma. I am not offended by the term melungeon, it is simply a word that described a tri-racial ethnicity.

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  7. Check out my eBook / Book about Pocahontas to Benjamin Bolling.

    http://thebaldwinstories.wix.com/author-blog

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  8. Wonderful discussion, guys. Thanks for all the in-put and for the links to more sources. You guys just made my whole day, thank you.
    David

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  9. David Green, you should read my book "Pocahontas to Benjamin Bolling" it clears up the Red, White and Blue Bolling questions. Check it out at: http://thebaldwinstories.wix.com/author-blog
    Thanks, Oakley Dean Baldwin.

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  10. Benjamin Bolling is also my 6x great grandfather and I am not native or melungeon.

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  11. Very interesting. Benjamin Bolling is my 5th gg.

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    1. I am aware of the 27 year old Y-DNA test that only checks 23 markers from males concerning the (Blue) Bollings for many years as I have been researching Pocahontas for over 20 years. Great advancements have been made with DNA testing over the past 26 years. One advancement was been with Autosomal DNA which checks over 700,000 markers from both male and female lines, which most Law Enforcement labs are now using to catch criminals. In fact several TV shows like (Who do you think you are?) use autosomal DNA to track families back for hundreds of years. If you have questions about your Bollings family lines be sure to check out the overwhelming evidence in my “Pocahontas to Benjamin Bolling” book and make up your own mind. Check out this exciting story at our author website at: http://thebaldwinstories.wix.com/author-blog

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  12. Who’s to say he didn’t have children by other women? So pretty much they are saying (blue) Bowling’s don’t know where they (we) came from! That’s just not right.

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    1. Repeating old information! We are aware of the 27 year old Y-DNA test that only checks 23 markers from males concerning the (Blue) Bollings for many years as I have been researching Pocahontas for over 20 years. Great advancements have been made with DNA testing over the past 26 years. One advancement was been with Autosomal DNA which checks over 700,000 markers from both male and female lines, which most Law Enforcement labs are now using to catch criminals. In fact several TV shows like (Who do you think you are?) use autosomal DNA to track families back for hundreds of years. If you have questions about your Bollings family lines be sure to check out the overwhelming evidence in my “Pocahontas to Benjamin Bolling” book and make up your own mind. Check out this exciting story at our author website at: http://thebaldwinstories.wix.com/author-blog

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