Pocahontas-Rolfe Celebration

A March 1957 invitation issued to the descendants of Pocahontas and John Rolfe describes some of the events planned as part of the 350th anniversary celebration of the founding of the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia. A reenactment of the wedding ceremony between Pocahontas and English colonist John Rolfe was to take place in which the officiating minister would wear seventeenth-century vestments, and one of the members of the bridal party would be "little Pocahontas Lamb, descendant of the Indian princess." In fact, Pocahontas was not a "princess" in any modern sense and, despite large numbers of elite Virginians claiming her as an ancestor, legitimate kinship ties are hard to prove. Eudora Ramsay Richardson, chairperson of the events planned for April 5, 1957, claims in this letter that more than a thousand descendants of the colonial-era pair had already expressed interest in the occasion. She promised "attractive name tags for all to wear" during the day's activities, which would include the wedding reenactment, a lecture titled "Pocahontas, America's First Heroine," and a picnic lunch (with box lunches for a dollar) "at which far-flung members of the Pocahontas-Rolfe family will be reunited."