The Pocahontas-John Smith StoryEdmunds, Pocahontas Wight
History
The Pocahontas-John Smith Story
Edmunds, Pocahontas Wight
Pocahontas, -1617; Smith, John, 1580-1631
Lecturers and notables have singled me out of the mob for the name's
sake only. The sonorous American poet Vachel Lindsay bent low as he
halted a campus receiving line: "My dear, I must kiss your hand!" When
Father told Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, who is also a descendant, of his wife's
and daughter's names, she told him: "Now, I want to shake both of your
hands."
A tobacco company sent an agent to ask if Mother and I, as descendants
of John Rolfe, the first tobacconist, would endorse their product. I
have received a letter while abroad addressed: "Mademoiselle, la
Princesse des Peaux Rouges." That is less surprising when it is noted
that a tavern called: "La Belle Sauvage" still stood in England two and
a half centuries after her visit. I was told, even before the daily
newspaper controversy in 1950 about her burial place that every English
school-child knows the story of Pocahontas. The English were delighted
when my three children and I signed the register book at the Pocahontas
Memorial Chapel of Unity on July 3, 1955.
The vestry book at St. George's Church at Gravesend, England declares
that Pocahontas is buried under the chancel there. However, in 1907 a
Mr. Tucker of Dover Road, Norfleet claimed to have exhumed the very
skeleton and relics one mile from the church. In 1923 the Associated
Press reported from Gravesend that excavations had been started to
locate the bones in the presence of the recorder of the church and
representatives of the English-Speaking Union and of the British Museum.
Thirty skeletons were secretly dug up, but not identified. On the last
day of May of that year, it was reported that citizens, who resented
having their ancestors exhumed, had told the offending archaeologists,
one of whom was a descendant of Pocahontas, that they would be punished
by visiting evil spirits. They peered furiously through the gates as one
hundred skeletons were dug up.
In 1914 the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia had
placed two stained glass windows in the church, one depicting Ruth among
the alien corn, and the other Rebecca--that being the baptismal name of
the converted savage. The deserted church became the concern of Rev.
Daughton-Fear. He solicited funds to preserve it as a "Chapel of Unity"
for all faiths as a memorial to Pocahontas. Many Americans urged that
her bones be brought home. A Glass Company offered a reward for their
return, and gallant volunteers such as the Playwright Paul Green were
heard from until the project was dismissed as impractical.
I
John Smith was well worth rescue by Pocahontas for this country's sake,
if not for her own. Americans halt before his statue--however tarnished
and battered the brass. Still, he was no model lad in his lively day. He
was the bold exception to the rules of the school at Louth, England,
which he recommended for the other--and duller fellow. A duller fellow
would have dug in the lush Lincolnshire countryside forever and a day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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