The famous marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe in Virginia in 1614 led through the generations to the marriage of their great-great granddaughter, Martha Bolling, to a Thomas Eldridge in 1727. This branch of the family commemorated their famous ancestors for generations onwards, leading in more than one case to the christening of a Pocahontas Eldridge. The original Pocahontas of Virginia was brought to England by her husband, and died, in, of all places, Gravesend, Kent, having been presented in the interim to London society as an exemplar of the 'civilized savage', a product of the humanising touch of English values.
Pocahontas Eldridge: born about 1864
Thomas Eldridge’s father, also named Thomas, was born in 1685, in the Henrico colony in Virginia, so the Eldridges were reasonably well represented in the settlement of the New World.
Much later in history, Lieutenant Commander John Eldridge Jr. (1903 –1942), a descendant of Pocahontas through this very line, was commemorated posthumously for his role in the US attack on the Solomon Islands not only with the award of a Navy Cross but by having a destroyer escort named after him, the USS. Eldridge.
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