She admits that he likely harbored a passionate love for Pocahontas, but complicates that love by suggesting he saw her, like so many others did, as a tool to be used in pursuit of his own dreams. Townsend renders Rolfe as somewhat self-involved, socially cunning, and astute. He died in 1622 and left his lands to Thomas. Back in the colony, he remarried, continued farming tobacco, and worked to raise his social status among the colonists and his reputation back in London. After burying her, Rolfe left their young son, Thomas, in the care of a prominent vice admiral and returned to Jamestown. As they prepared to leave England, however, Pocahontas fell gravely ill and died. The subjects of high society gossip and intrigue at court, Rolfe and Pocahontas represented to Londoners the possibilities of the New World and its bounties.
Historians estimate he was born around 1585 in Norfolk, England, while not much else is known about Rolfe’s life between then and 1609, when he and his wife boarded the Sea Venture as part of a convoy carrying 500 settlers to the New World. He and Pocahontas were invited to London together, as honored guests of the Virginia Company. There is very little concrete information regarding John Rolfe’s early life. Pocahontas taught John Rolfe methods of farming and harvesting tobacco, and soon Rolfe was a successful merchant. After securing permission from the governor to marry her, and wrestling with his own qualms about taking a “strange” (non-white) wife, Rolfe and Pocahontas were wed. Then, while Pocahontas was held captive at the Jamestown outpost Henrico, Rolfe met and fell in love with the young woman. In Jamestown, Rolfe lived with his wife until her death. After being shipwrecked on Bermuda for several months-during which time Rolfe’s pregnant wife gave birth to a baby girl who died soon after-Rolfe and the other shipwrecked colonists built two new ships and sailed up to Virginia. Pocahontas’s second husband, John Rolfe, traveled to the New World in 1609, dreaming of making his fortune as a merchant by farming tobacco.
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