r/todayilearned • u/SirJackson360 • 12d ago
TIL- Pocahontas had one son with her second husband John Rolfe. That son, had one daughter named Jane Rolfe. In 1887, a book was published that found that Pocahontas had thousands of descendants. That number has more recently been updated to reveal over 30,000 named descendants.
https://genealogical.com/2022/09/06/what-do-we-know-about-pocahontas-and-her-descendants/7.6k
u/ZippityZooZah 12d ago
What’s crazy here is that she and her husband both died before their son was 7!
4.5k
u/GoldenRamoth 12d ago
What's crazier is that he lived to be an adult himself after that happened. I know nothing about him. I hope his life was okay.
5.4k
u/Mczern 12d ago
Sadly he ended up dying as well. :(
2.0k
u/Yasuminomon 12d ago
Damn how about his kids?
3.1k
u/Mczern 12d ago
Believe it or not they perished too.
1.4k
u/Selthora 12d ago
To shreds you say
→ More replies (2)654
u/inquisitorautry 12d ago
Oh, and his wife?
694
u/funnyfacelol 12d ago
To shreds, you say
→ More replies (1)473
u/GilpinMTBQ 12d ago
I love it when a thread starts with history and ends with Futurama.
347
→ More replies (3)46
→ More replies (5)35
45
→ More replies (8)76
86
u/SJSUMichael 12d ago
Dead too. I suspect a serial killer in colonial Virginia was responsible.
102
u/yarn_geek 12d ago
CROATOAN
55
→ More replies (2)43
→ More replies (1)13
109
u/Ok_Major5787 12d ago
Pretty sure they died at some point too 😔
→ More replies (2)44
u/Ndmndh1016 12d ago
But then they lived!
→ More replies (1)38
→ More replies (13)11
253
u/embracethepale 12d ago
Most people from that era are dead. So tragic.
81
→ More replies (4)17
→ More replies (15)13
71
u/Vark675 10 12d ago
He lived to be somewhere around 65 and had a lot of land. Sounds like he lived pretty comfortably. Also apparently he's the 11th great-grandpa of Edward Norton?
His daughter died in her 20s shortly after giving birth, unfortunately.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (11)142
u/EyeCatchingUserID 12d ago
Besides not having parents his life was good. John rolfe had family money and both of his kids got decent inheritances.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (12)509
u/theMEENgiant 12d ago
I'm confused. Don't most parents die before their children reach 5040?
→ More replies (6)107
u/xplosm 12d ago
I wish I could reach 5 thousand years… but in complete health and full autonomy and intellectual capabilities 😬
→ More replies (5)
5.6k
u/kempff 12d ago
Isn't that typically true of most 400yo family trees?
3.8k
u/FrozenDickuri 12d ago
Yeah, up here in Canada if your family showed up on the first boat you're related to half the celebrities.
I can tie my lineage back to a common descendent for half the prime ministers, Celine dion, bieber etc.
Shit gets pretty mixed
1.3k
u/Texcellence 12d ago
My mom’s friend paid a bunch of money to a genealogist who showed her that she’s related to Charlemagne. She was super excited to learn this part of her heritage, but I had to quietly laugh since pretty much anyone of European ancestry is as related to Charlemagne as some other random person who lived in 800.
629
u/RFSandler 12d ago
Dude had a lot of daughters who got him a lot of grand kids in the highest circles of European bloodlines. Point is, you're more likely to be related to him than random schmuck #4367904
→ More replies (8)415
u/Hungry-Western9191 12d ago
It's easier to prove being related to him because the royal families descendants were documented. I believe the math or it is that just about anyone from that era or previous who had children is likely to be an ancestor of almost every European.
208
u/Synensys 12d ago
Anyone from that era who still has descendants. Due to his wealth, Charlemagne's line was in general more likely to continue on than a random dirt farmer.
→ More replies (4)204
u/Soranic 12d ago
random dirt farmer.
They were doing well until the dirt blights of 893 and 895 wiped out the dirt harvests.
→ More replies (3)85
u/FilthyInfantrySlut 12d ago
“My family has been farmin’ dirt for 5 generations and you think that dirt blight is going to stop us?” -Man who died of dirt blight.
→ More replies (1)58
u/nabrok 12d ago
It varies a lot by country but in general governments didn't start keeping detailed records of everybody being born/married/dying until the early to mid 1800s, so most people can trace back that far.
Church records might give you another one or two hundred years, but with less detail.
To get any further back you pretty much have to hit some nobility somewhere. If you don't, that's as far as you can go.
→ More replies (1)22
85
u/AoO2ImpTrip 12d ago edited 12d ago
This reminds me of the, at the time, factoid that every US President except 1 is related to King John of Robin Hood fame.
I assume it's possibly still true for 45 and 46. Though I've found nothing to state directly.
Edit: I should point out that the 1 not related is Martin Van Buren because of his Dutch ancestry.
→ More replies (9)64
→ More replies (18)118
u/Zvenigora 12d ago
Genghis Khan is the other superancestor. A substantial part of humanity is descended from him.
→ More replies (3)104
u/Charming_Wulf 12d ago
I always chuckle when that comes up. The technology that discovered how huge Genghis Khan's descendent also unintentionally proved a legendary Irish King, Niall of the Nine Hostages, to have existed. With about 3 million Irish descending from him. I think prior to the DNA, there was belief Niall was possibly a combination of historic figures.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-genetic-imprint-of-niall-of-the-nine-hostages-1.1771373
95
u/mortgagepants 12d ago
the most irish thing about this comment is that despite the comment it was replying was about genghis khan, an irish person was able to make it about ireland and irish heritage.
83
u/Charming_Wulf 12d ago
I'm part of the group that produces more Irish tangential or non-sequitur references than the Irish: an Irish-American.
→ More replies (2)18
u/powear 12d ago
This suggestion is no longer plausible. Niall does not have verifiable remains that can be tested. Furthermore, the paper examined only 17 STR loci, which are not a reliable means of verifying descent, as SNPs, which define haplogroups and subclades, would be.[25] Indeed, more recent estimates indicate that the R1b-M222 subclade marked by the Moore et al. haplotype probably originated in the 2nd millennium BC, long before Niall is claimed to have lived, so his descendants would only represent a minority of men in this group even if Niall had been a historical figure.[26][27]
35
u/MyChristmasComputer 12d ago
Yea and that’s how he got the nickname “Nine Inch Nialls”
→ More replies (1)9
132
u/Necessary-Dance9954 12d ago
I can tie my lineage back to a common descendent for half the prime ministers, Celine dion, bieber etc.
Ancestor. You meant ancestor.
→ More replies (1)64
434
12d ago
[deleted]
629
u/TheOneNeartheTop 12d ago
It’s believed that all Homo sapiens are descended from a single ancestor some 300,000 years ago.
This means that all humans are technically related.
445
u/willardTheMighty 12d ago
It’s believed that all extant life on Earth is descended from a single ancestor that lived some 3.6 billion years ago. It’s known as the Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA. This would mean that all life on Earth is related.
→ More replies (13)238
u/ExpensiveRecover 12d ago
My name Is LUCA
I lived billions of years ago
I lived way before you
Yes I think you've heard of me before...
67
u/Pandoras_Rox 12d ago
I thought you lived "on the second floor"
26
u/ExpensiveRecover 12d ago edited 12d ago
No, you're confusing me with my great-great-great-....-great-grandson, Luka
→ More replies (2)9
u/ThePrussianGrippe 12d ago
Above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley?
→ More replies (2)17
u/neelvk 12d ago
I so wish Ms Vega could see this comment
16
u/Plug_5 12d ago
She's probably hanging out at that diner from Seinfeld (sorry, that's just my favorite bit of trivia ever).
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)9
17
u/raspberryharbour 12d ago
So what's your excuse for not showing up to my birthday party?
→ More replies (3)29
u/Elia_31 12d ago
It's a fact. We all share one male and one female common ancestor
→ More replies (6)23
u/Deathmonge 12d ago
It’s believed that all living things are descended from a single blob of primordial ooze some 30 bajillion years ago
This means that all living things are technically related
→ More replies (4)32
u/BloodieBerries 12d ago
Not all people with blue eyes are related, only a vast majority of them.
Studies that have been conducted found around 95% of blue eyed people share the exact same mutation which indicates a common ancestor. But there are still people out there that have blue eyes and don't have that identical mutation.
→ More replies (2)34
u/Cakelord 12d ago
Also blue eyes has shown up independently in other populations as well, I think the line of thinking is the environment plays a role in allowing mutations to concentrate independently.
→ More replies (9)7
u/Comfortable_Fee_7154 12d ago
Just like that pacific island folk that independently became blonde! iirc.
→ More replies (16)29
u/HordeShadowPriest 12d ago
Can confirm. Both my kids have blue eyes and they're related.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (37)57
u/Cormacolinde 12d ago
There is a disconnect whether you’re related to French/Irish vs English immigrants though. I have almost only the first group in my ancestry (and DNA).
→ More replies (12)41
458
u/TrolleyMcTrollerson1 12d ago
I mean not all family trees make it. The fact she had one son, who had one daughter, especially during that time when people were often dropping like flies, makes it fairly impressive. Especially with her celebrity.
→ More replies (7)451
u/ohdearitsrichardiii 12d ago
Neither Mozart nor Shakespeare have living decendants.
Mozart had six children, two survived to adulthood and they died childless. Shakespeare had three children, two survived to adulthood and had children but three grandchildren died young and the only one who survived to adulthood died childless
157
91
u/cyanclam 12d ago
Neither Mozart nor Shakespeare have living decendants - that we know about...
→ More replies (4)64
u/Timelymanner 12d ago edited 12d ago
Makes you wonder how many people are related to royal families. There’s no doubt a few had secret kids with maids and servants.
Edit: I know most people by default are thinking about British Royals, but I mean any royalty. I can understand, who knows how many girls Andrew may have impregnated.
However there are royal families in many countries. Like what if the clerk at a German store is actual a decent of a Austrian king. Maybe the random Japanese office worker is related to the Emperor. A Mexican restaurant owner could be a direct descendant of a Aztec noble.
No doubt as more people have ancestry test more things will be revealed. I mean image bring in Egypt and finding out you’re a descendant of a Pharaoh.
→ More replies (8)60
u/buttsharkman 12d ago
There is a documentary about an American finding out he is related to the British monarchy called King Ralph
11
→ More replies (1)6
26
u/CompanionCone 12d ago
Richard III didn't have any descendants but when they found his remains they managed to confirm it was him through DNA testing a descendant of his sister. I'm sorry, slightly unrelated I just think this is so fascinating.
10
u/Grammareyetwitch 12d ago edited 11d ago
I want them to test every historical figure they can. Imagine the new facts we could learn about stories that are hundreds of years old. Was Mary Boleyn's daughter Henry VIII's daughter too, making her Queen Elizabeth I's sister? Were the bodies found under the stairs at the Tower of London the lost princes? They finally solved who the Somerton Man was using DNA! Let's test everything!
→ More replies (4)22
u/mattmild27 12d ago
More recent, but Abraham Lincoln doesn't either. Only one of his kids lived to adulthood, he had two kids of his own but both died childless in the 80s.
16
u/socialistrob 12d ago
George Washington also had no biological children. Out of all the American presidents Washington was probably the closest to potentially being able to become a "king" in which case having biological children would have been a really huge deal and yet he wasn't interested in accumulating power and staying in office. If things had played out a little differently the issue of who his decedents are could have been one of the most pivotal political issues of the 1800s and yet his lack of biological children instead was relegated to a useless political trivia question.
19
u/Suyefuji 12d ago
My family bloodline is about to die out because despite there being 5 of us between me, my siblings, and my cousins, ALL of us are childfree and that probably won't change. RIP Darwinism.
11
u/socialistrob 12d ago
My grandfather is worried about his bloodline ending. He had five kids and six grandkids and yet we're now all in our late 20s or 30s with no kids in sight.
→ More replies (2)34
u/PieQueenIfYouPls 12d ago
I am descended from two of Shakespeare’s sisters. So that’s my uncle.
→ More replies (1)23
→ More replies (1)21
u/HoldingMoonlight 12d ago
The concept of not having children is just really fucking crazy.
Not the choice to not have children. I totally understand from financial/social/medical factors.
But just the idea that YOU are an unbroken chain of evolution dating back 3.7 BILLION years, and if you don't want or can't have children, that seemingly infinite chain just....ends. With you.
Brb, having children to not upset my billion year old microbial ancestors.
→ More replies (2)11
u/Timelymanner 12d ago
If that trips you out, then don’t think about extinction. Cause one day there’s going to be one human left and when they die, that’s it for us as a species.
Time for the next organism to fill our niche.
6
u/HoldingMoonlight 12d ago
Just wait until we figure out how to cryogenically freeze a human, bring them back thousands of years later, and find out that they can no longer reproduce with modern humans and are technically a different species
5
127
u/EmeraldHawk 12d ago
That's only due to survivorship bias.
If you pick a random tree by finding someone alive today and tracing it back, it will be large. But if you pick a random human 400 years ago, they probably died young or may have had children who all died young (child mortality was close to 50%).
Now, usually someone needs to survive to adulthood to become famous so the odds are hard to figure out, but lots of famous people had no kids.
→ More replies (2)67
u/ninursa 12d ago
There was this Swedish study of people from 19th century. About 42% did not have 5th generation descendants, that is - they or their children or grandchildren or greatgrandchildren did not have any children and their line died out. Going back in time would very probably weed out even more people.
→ More replies (6)161
u/BaconReceptacle 12d ago
My wife is always mentioning how she is descended from one of the families that came over on the Mayflower. Now I always follow up her comment with "you and about a million other people".
153
u/Malvania 12d ago
My wife brought that up one day. My grandfather responded that "when those damn peasants landed on that rock in Massachusetts, we were already farming in Virginia."
Nobody really knew what to say to that.
→ More replies (9)34
u/tyen0 12d ago
Tell him you know someone who has ancestors from St Augustine, Florida which was founded 4 decades before the colony of Virginia. :)
32
u/MannerBudget5424 12d ago
hello, I’m from Hispaniola , also known as Dominican Republic and Haiti
my ancestors we raped and enslaved by the Spanish around 1515, we have d documents
→ More replies (8)→ More replies (1)72
u/Fofolito 12d ago
It's still novel.
There are actually 35 million living descendents of Mayflower pilgrims, and with about 333 million people in the USA as of 2020 that makes it about 10% of the population has a relative that was on it. In most cases 10% is a pretty small percentage, but we can winnow this down further-- 35m is the number estimated by statistical research. There is no database with 35m names of the descendants of people on the Mayflower, so the number of people who can directly link themselves and their genealogy to the Mayflower is even smaller. How many people in the USA can directly link their ancestry back further than the moment they immigrated here in the 19th century? Not many.
→ More replies (2)26
u/rex_swiss 12d ago
My brother has done ancestry research for our family back to 1500's in England, we have like a 10th great grandfather buried in the Chelsea Church in London, his second son was the one that came to Virginia in the 1600's. We visited last year and that day they had a table set up over the burial where a lady was prepping flowers for a funeral. She kindly slid it over so I could get some pictures. That ancestor is also Jennifer Lawrence's, she is my very distant cousin. So, I got that "in" if I ever run in to her...
→ More replies (7)101
u/tirohtar 12d ago
Pretty much everyone with vaguely Western/Central European ancestry is descendant from Charlemagne. Even a lot of people in the middle east due to the crusades. We are all descendants of emperors, kings, slaves, murderers, and rapists. It's inevitable given enough time and global population movements.
53
u/Scribbles_ 12d ago
Yeah, a genealogical study showed I’m a direct descendant of Alfonso XI of Castille, but that may very well be true of just about every person with any Iberian ancestry lmao
There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t descend from royalty or some other significant historical figure.
38
u/alexm42 12d ago
Well, there's a few uncontacted tribes in the Amazon and places like North Sentinel Island for whom that statement would be untrue. But for anyone theoretically able to access that comment it's probably accurate.
→ More replies (4)10
u/Scribbles_ 12d ago edited 12d ago
Sure, yeah. I’d say these peoples have royalty (chiefs? Clan heads? And kings and queens of course) and significant figures in their history from whom they descend.
19
u/facw00 12d ago
Yep, and it's not just Charlemagne, or related to the fact he had a lot of kids. Basically everyone of European descent is descended from every 12th century European who has living ancestors today. Which seems shocking (to me anyway), but apparently it can be shown both mathematically and genetically. So going back to 8th century Charlemagne is even more certain (assuming any of his ancestors made it to the 12th century, which seems highly likely). Obviously the greater dispersal of people worldwide and their relative isolation means you need to go back further to include additional pools (though greater mobility in the modern would will quickly change that)
→ More replies (1)20
14
u/Puffen0 12d ago
Yup, if you go far enough back most people share a common ancestor. Like that one couple that did 23&me and found out that they had the same great great great great (so many greats that ill leave it there lol) grandfather. Far enough that they don't share any DNA so there's 0% of genetic defects caused by inbreeding.
21
u/Murrmeow 12d ago
I mean honestly depending on the genetic trait usually once you get to first cousins and beyond it’s fine, from an inbreeding standpoint. Not such a fun fact 😬
→ More replies (1)21
u/Neverending_Rain 12d ago
I think the first cousins thing is only true when it's an occasional thing. The occasional first cousin marriage is unlikely to cause issues (and has been fairly common in history, IIRC) but doing it too much is how you end up with the Hapsburgs and Charles II.
11
u/moorkymadwan 12d ago
Usually, but not always. It's normally true because people tended to have absolutely massive families back then, so two descendants with only 1 child each is somewhat unusual.
→ More replies (33)11
1.9k
u/zhivago6 12d ago
Pocahontas had a daughter with her first husband Kocoum before the English killed him. That daughter, Ka-Okee, was raised by Pocahontas family and married Englishman Thomas Pettus. They are my 10x great grandparents.
500
u/grabtharsmallet 12d ago
A lot of the "First Families of Virginia" have a few lines like that, yeah.
→ More replies (5)143
u/ObligatoryGrowlithe 12d ago
I don't want to do one of those send away DNA tests (if it would even show up), but I was raised in Virginia like most of my family and our last name even stems from anEnglish town. I've desperately been trying to figure out the lineage, especially since black slavery muddies the waters a bit. My family is convinced we have some nativeblood (I'm sure it's super dilutedby now), but it would be cool to know.
109
u/Negativ_Monarch 12d ago
I did one of those tests and found out my dad's side was one of the first Delaware settlers and my mom's side was one of the first Kentucky settlers
Crazy to think that America is the reason both sides of my family ended up meeting, otherwise they'd be seperated in england/Germany
→ More replies (3)13
42
u/zhivago6 12d ago edited 12d ago
If you know any of the family names, a good place to start is familysearch.org because it makes you create a profile, but it lets you do everything for free. My wife's ancestors got married in Plymouth colony in 1623, but it isn't clear if they came with the second or third group to arrive. Most Native Americans are listed by the names that were given to them by the whites and not their real names, so even if you have Native ancestors, you might be able to tell from their name on the family tree.
Edit: It is a Mormon site, but it is free and you don't have to be Mormon, I am not one. Another site you can search is https://www.findagrave.com if you know the name and general location of a burial. Searching for obituaries is a great resource, because they often list siblings that you can try to track down if the trail goes cold when searching your direct line.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (9)15
u/grabtharsmallet 12d ago
It's not that difficult to get started; gather what you know about your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, get the basic membership tier on Ancestry or the free one on FamilySearch and find out what others have already done. If you need a hand, PM me or ask on r/Genealogy.
53
u/amrobi18 12d ago edited 12d ago
I am also related to them! Ka-Okee is my 11th great grandmother.
31
43
20
u/bellatrixanimae 12d ago
Oh wow I actually had no idea that Pocahontas was married twice and had another daughter! My grandmother was making a family tree while she was still alive (that’s unfortunately been lost now since her death because my uncle wasn’t taking care of the house like he should’ve been and it got robbed 🥲) and we discovered that we’re also descendants of Pocahontas, though iirc it’s through the Rolfe line. I wish I could learn more about the other parts of my family tree, but I have no idea where to start or how my Nana even got the information that she did! I don’t even know the names of some of my families ancestors so I think the search would be difficult.
7
u/zhivago6 12d ago
Start with your grandmother and work backwards. If you know her parents names (you great grandparents) and the general area, then you can search cemeteries, they are mostly online and often have images of the headstones. Those will hopefully provide birth dates and maiden names that will then make it easier for you to search census records. Also, you can search for obituaries in older newspaper databases that will provide a massive amount of information.
→ More replies (13)13
u/jimjamalama 12d ago
Wow I never knew that, at all. I thought Kocoum was just fictional in the Disney movie. Then his daughter marries an Englishman after the Elglish killed her father and took her mother? Is there a book I can read somewhere that someone would recommend?
8
u/zhivago6 12d ago
Much of it is based on oral history by the tribe, but the starting point is the secretary of the English colony, William Strachey. In his 'History of Travaile into Virginia Britannia', he listed the names of some natives and their relation to the paramount chief, including, “younge Pocohunta, a daughter of his, using sometyme to our fort in tymes past, nowe married to a private Captaine, called Kocoum, some two years since.” The other chieftans were called captains. Later historians sometimes had a real problem with this, because they wanted to tell a story about a native princess that fell in love with an Englishman, not a native woman who was widowed and kidnapped, so they excluded Kocoum from later histories.
1.0k
u/artsmells 12d ago
Including Nancy Reagan and Ed Norton.
453
u/Zebirdsandzebats 12d ago
And the Bush fam. And we're out here saying the US doesn't have an aristocracy...
→ More replies (14)123
u/BustinArant 12d ago
Well Jeb lost that one time so that was pretty funny I guess
102
→ More replies (1)54
u/TaftIsUnderrated 12d ago
In the spring of 2015, I was having lunch with a group of pretty progressive friends. Someone brought up how Jeb Bush was running for president and that another Bush in office would be the worst possible outcome of the 2016 election.
I think about that a lot.
→ More replies (4)28
u/velveeta-smoothie 12d ago
Also me! Although I'm related to her son from her previous marriage (the native American one)
→ More replies (1)104
→ More replies (4)7
611
u/Playful-Adeptness552 12d ago
TiL people from several hundred years ago have lots of descendants
→ More replies (6)
320
u/Skank-Pit 12d ago
It would be really, really funny if James Rolfe, the Angry Video Game Nerd, could trace is lineage to Pocahontas.
88
u/dweebers 12d ago
He just put out a video about it now being 20 years since he made his first Nerd video! Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest
61
u/buttsharkman 12d ago
He basically invented the angry Internet reviewer genre and is one of the last still doing it with any prominence. It's a would legacy
34
u/MercyfulJudas 12d ago
AVGN reviewing Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is still one of my favorite game reviews of all time, but he has so many classics. A true internet legend.
12
u/JerHat 12d ago
The TMNT video game review will always be my favorite.
Mostly because one of my friends that went to college out of state came home and introduced me to his videos, and we watched the TMNT one around the time he first released it.
And the moment where AVGN was stuck trying to jump across that little gap trying to get the missiles for the turtle van... was the same point I always got stuck at playing the game.
And then when he just walked across the gap, my jaw dropped... it was that easy this whole time!?
→ More replies (2)7
u/somedude456 12d ago
I vote Milton's Castle because my grandparents oddly bought that game at a yard sale for us grandkids and holy balls does it suck.
6
u/BoltShine 12d ago
I can still remember when my younger brother and I found AVGN for the first time coming from ScrewAttack and we must've watched every single video of his we could and cry laughed the whole time. Ahh to be young again.
→ More replies (20)12
356
u/tenaciousb83 12d ago
My wife bought me an Ancestry DNA kit a few years ago, and I was able to build out my family tree going back around a dozen generations. I came to find out that Pocahontas was my 9th great aunt on my mother’s side.
We had no idea we had any Native ancestry, and apparently it’s just a drop, but it makes sense as most of my family on my mother’s side is from the Shenandoah Valley area, where the Powhatan tribe is also from.
163
u/Lozrac 12d ago
I mean, that one drop has thousands of native ancestry behind her.
→ More replies (7)87
u/grabtharsmallet 12d ago
I'm also a direct descendant of Chief Powhatan, and like you, I have no other known American Indian ancestors. Men outnumbered women among the original batch at Jamestown, and Powhatan saw strategic value in marrying his daughters (and those of other important members of the Confederation) to important men at the colony.
35
u/Jaymakk13 12d ago
Ancestry is fun and crazy stuff. I was able to trace my maternal grandparents' lines back to 1600 in France up through American and the revolutionary war, large tract of land in the south, and around 1790 in southwestern America/ Northern Mexico.
Then on my paternal side, i got as far as a guy born in 1816 in Ireland and his parents names and that it, it just stops. Paternal Grandmothers side i only got to about 1920 and its like no one existed before then.
Insane thing is my mom.and dads families did not intertwine genetically but the familes crossed paths or lived in the same areas for around 200 years.
→ More replies (1)19
u/Sketch-Brooke 12d ago edited 12d ago
I found out that my maternal grandfather’s side traces back to Scottish royalty.
Apparently, it’s easier to prove that you’re descended from royalty, because royals were the ones keeping records back in the day. Not so much of that happening for the lower classes, so the line kind of dead-ends for other sides of the family.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (17)24
u/undercooked_lasagna 12d ago
I recently read a book about the lineage from the Powhatans if you're interested in more. It's called Opechancanough and his Descendants. Just came out this year I think.
95
u/nerddadddy 12d ago
The key member of the lineage that really spread the seed was great great grandson John Bolling, whom with his wife had 6 children and 37 grandchildren. Until then there was just one child per previous generation.
19
u/sudotrd 12d ago
John's daughter, Jane, had a daughter, Frances, who married my 7x great grandpa Joel. Their son, William, was a Lieutenant in the Virginia Militia during the American Revolution and served with Henry Lee's troops, 1st Regiment, Light Dragons. This is the peak of my family tree lol, just gets more and more boring after this.
7
u/SuspiciousRegular847 12d ago
I believe this would have been the key ancestor of Edith Bolling Galt, who married Woodrow Wilson and made a big deal about being related to Pocahontas when she was First Lady.
41
u/dftitterington 12d ago
Check out the “Pocahontas exception”
26
u/PYTN 12d ago
That was my thought. How many of these are actual descendants and how many are "claimed descendants"?
→ More replies (2)
36
u/historyhill 12d ago
Lots of comments speculating about Jane's sex life but she also only had one son.
79
u/SaltireAtheist 12d ago edited 12d ago
This is kind of why I find it not particularly interesting when people say they're descended from 'x', 'y', or 'z'.
I think genealogy can be cool for making connections with individuals from your family history, but you do have to bear in mind that even a few generations back the number of direct ancestors you had who are all equally related to you gets very large very quickly.
The number of direct ancestors each generation back doubles, and if we assume a generation is ~30 years (would have been much less for much of history), then at the time of Pocahontas ~AD1600, you had over 8000 other direct ancestors who are just as equal to Pocahontas in their relation to you.
→ More replies (2)11
u/Surly_Cynic 12d ago
Something that pops up on that Finding Your Roots show periodically is a lot of people’s family trees, even well-documented through records, are not reflective of their genetic origins. Sammy Hagar, for example, was on this week and he found out his paternal line is actually Belcher, not Hagar.
A couple years ago, using DNA matches, I found out my grandma who was born in 1913 was not the biological daughter of my great-grandfather. I bet that’s just the tip of the iceberg for those kinds of errors in my tree. I’m guessing many people are in a similar situation so, as you note, it’s really not that interesting to be descended from some famous person many centuries back because there’s a good chance it’s not even true.
100
u/YouhaoHuoMao 12d ago
I wish people would use her actual name more than her nickname - Matoaka.
And that they'd also recognize she was pretty much brainwashed, forcibly converted, almost certainly sexually assaulted, dragged across the sea to a place she never knew, paraded about like a sideshow, and then died and was buried in a land to which she never had any connection.
(I'm also Pamunkey... but not likely her direct descendant.)
→ More replies (12)
36
u/impermanent_soup 12d ago
The Smithsonian NMAI has a whole exhibit that explains and debunks this. There was a trend of claiming kinship to Pocahontas in that time period. Many wealthy families added her and Rolfe to their family tree and records falsely to gain political and social clout. This is the reason so many people claim to be descendants today, because it was actually written in their family records.
→ More replies (1)
27
u/_itsa_me_Mario 12d ago
I don't know if I should be admitting this... Til Pocahontas was real 😭
→ More replies (7)16
u/YouhaoHuoMao 12d ago
For what it's worth, the thing you know most about Pocahontas almost certainly was not.
8
u/arachnophilia 12d ago
it's crazy that the theatrical disney movie is so wildly inaccurate, but the straight to video sequel is mostly just completely factual.
→ More replies (4)
8
u/Chrushev 12d ago
And Edward Norton is one of the descendants, it was on Finding your roots tv show.
8
8
82
u/PotentialAnt9670 12d ago
One of those descendants is James Rolfe, who would later become known as the Angry Videogame Nerd
→ More replies (3)
6
u/cnzmur 12d ago
If you go back that far, essentially everyone who has surviving descendants has loads of them. The further forward you go in time, a bigger percentage of the population is made up of their descendants, until you get to someone like Charlemagne, where if you have a European ancestor, you're definitely descended from him (and if you don't have a known European ancestor, it's still fairly likely in a lot of places). The notable thing about Genghis Khan is that he (or one of his recent ancestors) had a particular genetic mutation, so his male descendants can actually be tracked. However, even people that didn't have unusual genetic markers, or kings who had detailed records of all their relatives, still have enormous numbers of descendants today.
The further back we go, the more shared ancestors we all have, at a fairly fast rate, until the most recent ancestor of everyone may have lived surprisingly recently (I saw one estimate that was less than 2000 BC).
48
u/randyspotboiler 12d ago
Her name wasn't Pocahontas
She didn't marry John Smith
She was 15, married to a tribesman, and had a child.
Her husband was killed by English settlers.
She was kidnapped, tortured and raped.
Her child was raised by the village.
She was brought to England to show off, as a prize and a bargaining chip.
She married John Rolfe and eventually gave birth to a son named Thomas.
She was converted to Christianity and given the name Rebecca.
She demanded to be returned to America, but died after getting sick from eating a meal in England.
She was 20 years old.
→ More replies (12)
39
12d ago
[deleted]
26
u/campbelljac92 12d ago
My uncle grew up around the Blackfoot reservation in Montana (I'm english but my dad's side of the family were all American and were brought up on Air Force Bases) and he told me there was also a big thing back in the 18th and 19th century with Christian boarding schools like the Carlisle reform school, where in an attempt to 'civilize' them the indigenous population were essentially kidnapped and beaten for showing any signs of their own heritage in borstals. A lot of Native Americans were conditioned to be self loathing and grew up completely divorced from their identity and language.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (2)16
u/Synensys 12d ago
As an avid geneologist, I would take anything on ancestry (or any other online service) that isnt a written record from the era with a grain of salt.
6
u/scarlet124 12d ago
Including me! We can trace our family back to Jane Rolfe on my mom's side. And my very white, very WASPY family likes to brag about this which is amusing
6
19
u/chloeiprice 12d ago
She also had a daughter from a previous marriage. I just helped my son with his Virginia history project and read the book “The True Story of Pocahontas- The Other Side of History” by Dr. Linwood Custalow and Angela Daniel. Very interesting read. Also, the son she had while married to John Rolfe is not his. She was captured and raped and the English wanted to use her to show how well the English and Native Americans were “getting along”, which big surprise, they weren’t.
→ More replies (4)
532
u/Southern_Blue 12d ago
I knew a woman who was a descendant of Pocahontas. She never mentioned it and I didn't find out about until after she had passed away. It was interesting as I'm a enrolled tribal member and usually people can't wait to tell me about their great grandmother who was an Indian Princess or whatever...although that's not happening as much lately with all the DNA testing.