14 Facts About John Rolfe

John Rolfe is best known for being the husband of Pocahontas and the first settler in the colony of Virginia to successfully cultivate a tobacco crop for export.

John Rolfe played a crucial role in the Virginia Colony's early economy by introducing a sweeter strain of tobacco from Trinidad, which became a profitable cash crop.

The tobacco strain cultivated by John Rolfe laid the foundation for Virginia's thriving tobacco industry.

John Rolfe was one of a number of businessmen who saw the opportunity to undercut Spanish imports by growing tobacco in England's new colony in Virginia.

John Rolfe had somehow obtained seeds to take with him from a special popular strain, then being grown in Trinidad, South America, even though Spain had declared a penalty of death to anyone selling such seeds to a non-Spaniard.

One major inconsistency that shows they are not his parents is that John Rolfe is known to have had a brother named Henry.

Dorothy Mason Rolfe and her husband John Rolfe are not known to have had a son named Henry.

However, John Rolfe wanted to introduce sweeter strains from Trinidad, using the hard-to-obtain Spanish seeds he brought with him.

John Rolfe named his Virginia-grown strain of the tobacco "Orinoco", possibly in honour of tobacco popularizer Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions in the 1580s up the Orinoco River in Guiana in search of the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado.

In 1612, John Rolfe established Varina Farms, a plantation along the James River about 30 miles upstream from Jamestown and across the river from Sir Thomas Dale's progressive development at Henricus.

John Rolfe returned to Virginia and resumed his work with tobacco.

Thomas John Rolfe, who had grown up in England, returned to Virginia as an adult and married Jane Poythress.

Thomas and Jane Rolfe had one child, Jane Rolfe, who married Robert Bolling and had a son, John Bolling, in 1676.

John Rolfe Bolling married Mary Kennon, daughter of Richard Kennon and Elizabeth Worsham of Conjurer's Neck.