Wyndham Robertson - Legacy and Writings

Legacy and Writings

Robertson was an early donor to Emory and Henry College, which later endowed the Robertson prize medal for "encouraging oratory".

After the American Civil War, Northern writers began questioning the validity of the rescue story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, attacking the accounts of the historical role played by both, as well as that of her husband John Rolfe. The movement was led by Henry Adams, a descendant of John Adams whose rival was John Randolph of Roanoke, a descendant of Pocahontas. Several Virginians replied, one of whom was Robertson. "Northern attacks disturbed him so much that he prepared a detailed study" and wrote Pocahontas alias Matoaka and Her Descendants through Her Marriage with John Rolfe. He traced her descendants, who included the Bollings, Branches, Lewises, Randolphs, and Pages, as well as his own family. His thesis was that because her descendants were notable, so was she. "History, poetry, and art," wrote Robertson, "have vied with one another in investing her name from that day to the present with a halo of surpassing brightness."