Rachael Crosaw cousin to Pocahontas

[D J Thornton]

from mroberts63199 posting on ancestry.com 5 Jul 2008 11:24PM
I cannot give all of supporting evidence, but the story goies that Pocahontas took a number of her relatives to England, with her, including her first cousin, daughter of Powhatan's sister, name unknown (but Leonard-reacher)called her Rachel as a possibility, since that name came down in the Crowshaw family. The Indians all took Christian names upon baptism. Pocahontas' name was Rebecca. Anyway, Pocahontas and her relatives stayed at the esate of Lord Delaware, Thomas West, in England, were Rachel supposedly bore an illegitimat son by Thomas West called Toby West or his Indian name, Totopotomoi. Rachel ended up marrying Joseph Croshaw and moved back to Virginia. Her daughter, Unity Croshaw, married Col. John West, nephew of Lord Delaware. Before marriage to Unity. John West has a known illegitimate son, John West by Cockacoeske Queen of the Pamunkeys. Cockacoeske was also married at one time to Totopotomoi,
Pocahontas' son, Thomas Rolfe, moved back to Va. where he had a daughter, Jane, who was ofen cared for by Unity (Croshaw) West. The connections seem to be endless.Rachel would have been in line for the ruling position of the Pamumkeys.
When Totopotomoi took over, it would mean tht his mother had to be dead. Checked the Croshaw's family and sure enough, at the time Totopotomoe took over, Joseph Crowshaw's first wife had recently died.
Also, you willsee in Cavalier's and Pioneers by Nugent that Toby West has a paptent for 500 acres of land that was later taken up by Col. Joseph Crowshaw. One of the early writings states that Totopotomoi's land was overtaken by an English Colonel.
Somehow, that 500 acres to have gotten back to Cockacoeske's son, John West, By Col. John West, as Indian John West left a will in Stafford Co. in which he left 500 acres "at Pamunkey" to his son.
Also, Col. Joseph Crosshaw's father, Raleigh Croshaw, appears to have had an Indian wife (not Joseph's mother, howver) fromhis long residence with the Patawoneck Tribe in Va. William Crowshaw, the Indian, was probably a son by the Indian marriage of Raleigh Crowshaw. This information was supplied to me by William L. Deyo
Died

I have a descent from Raleigh Croshaw, I found this info and a discussion
About
http://vanhook.us/rpt_ind.php

There are posts showing his wife as Unity
Ursula Unity Pawomeke Powhatan (1610 - 1646)
daughter of Japasaw Oppasus The Great Chief Patawomeke Powhatan
And Rachael .
There is considerable confusion since son Joseph was married 6 times with a daughter Unity and Rachael.
The name Rachael is passed down generations in the families.
My maternal great grandmother name was Rachael Crenshaw. Her mother was a Daughtery. They line I have back to Norfolk,VA. There was a Cornelius Dougherty who was an interpreter for the Queen of the Pamunky.
Raliiegh had a Indian son named William Crankshaw.
Ralieghs land
Rawleigh Chroshaw Esq., (AKA Capt. Rawleigh Crashaw), was from an old London merchant family; relatives were in the Virginia Company that founded Jamestown, VA on May 13, 1607. Captain Rawleigh emigrated to Jamestown in 1608 (in his 30s) and was elected to the VA House of Burgesses in 1623 for Elizabeth City when the colony gave him a grant of 500 acres at "Olde Poynt Comfort" near Kequotan (modern Hampton VA. The name "Kequotan" referred to the Native American tribe living there; modern translated spelling is "Kecoughtan," now the name of a local high school.) across the James River. He had two sons: Joseph and Richard.

He had a daughter or sister Katherine born in Gravesend England
Also
Raleigh Croshaw accompanied Claiborne on his explorations and, with just a few men, successfully defended a remote trading outpost up on the Potomac River in the 1622 attack. Captain Raleigh Croshaw was in the Potomac River trading in a small bark, commanded by Captain Spilman. There an Indian stole aboard and told them of the massacre, (1622) and that Opchanacanough had been practicing with his King and Country to betray them, which they refused to do, but that the Indians of Werowocomoco had undertaken it. Captain Spilman went there, but the Indians after seeing that his men were so vigilant and well armed, suspected that they had been discovered, therefore, to delude him, they gave him such good deals in trade, that his vessel was soon nearly overloaded”.
So he was responsible for warning Jamestown about the massacre.
Incidentally this is the second time a family member trading with the Indians were warned. I.e. The Bonners in Ft. Mims massacre,
Katherine Croshaw is also an ancestor of Thornton.
I see a lot of confusion comes in trees where folks don't know the lineages and folks discredit the Indian connection of the Wonen, Mo English women were born in Jamestown before 1610. The problem is those folks putting trees in wiki and genie have GPS genealogy proof and discount Oral Tradition, which leaves out Indian and African Ancestry. My grandmother daughter of Rachael Crenshaw said she was Cherokee the Crenshaw say there is Cherokee.
My mtdna is H, wondering if anyone has info or DNA connection to this. I already have indirect kinship to descendants of Pocahontas thru Stith. If Araceli us her cousin, this would be a closer connection, my dad is Cherokee by traction and DNA. I have a brick wall beyond about 1895 but there is a step parent Wikins, after Rev War. There is Wilkins and Adams in the J. Mooney Census of the Powhatan Confederacy. So all things are possuble

[D J Thornton]

Those who can prove direct descent from Rahleigh Croshaw are eligible for membership in the Jamestowne Society.
I descend from Raleigh Croshaw born 1570 England died 1624 Elizabeth River, Norfolk, Virginia,he married his 2nd wife Ursula Unity Patawomeck daughter of great chief Patawomeck and her mother was possibly a sister to Powahatan (Pocahontas).
Since Raleigh Croshaw lived with the Patawomeck Indian Tribe for a number of years and became an interpreter, it would not be at all far-fetched for him to have taken an Indian wife, probably a daughter of Chief Japasaw, brother of Powhatan. Japasaw was very fond of some of the English and helped them to get through the period of starvation at Jamestown by providing corn, etc. The Croshaw family has so many links to the Indians that my bet is that Capt. Richard's mother was of the Patawomeck Tribe.  They had at least 5 children named Richard, Joseph, Benjamin, Noah, and Ursala Unity (notice differance in the spelling of Ursala for her mother Ursula) Ursala Unity Croshaw married 1st Robert Blackwell http://www.multiwords.de/genealogy/Ja12%20Japasaw.html

Now, we come to the connection to our Patawomeck Tribe.  Our tribe was one of the subjects of Powhatan, as he stated in his own words, and a part of the Powhatan Federation.  We also know this from the testimony of Henry Spelman, who lived for a number of years with Chief Japasaw.  Because the Patawomeck Tribe was a part of the Federation, its rulers were appointed by the head of the Federation.  Both the Great King Patawomeck and his brother, Japasaw, the Lesser King/Chief, were appointed to their positions by Chief Powhatan.  In 1622, the Great King of Patawomeck was visited by Capt. John Smith.  He told Capt. Smith that Opitchipam [next brother of the late Chief Powhatan, who died in 1618] was his brother.  It was at this time that he also refused the gift of beads from Opechancanough, the next brother of Opitchipam, that were given to him to kill Capt. Rawleigh Croshaw and caused the break from the Powhatan Federation.  This has long been a point of confusion for many including myself.  The Great King of Patawomeck has often been stated, at this time, to have been Japasaw, not his older brother.  This was not the case, however.  The last apparent record of Japasaw was in 1619/1620, when he made a trip to Jamestown, as a representative of his brother, the Great King Patawomeck.  As will be explained later, Japasaw may have died by the early spring of 1622, and it was the Great King Patawomeck, the older brother, who was still alive in the fall of 1622 and talked to Capt. John Smith.  Your compiler was very glad that our wise Lesser Chief, Gary Cooke, pointed out in a recent Tribal Council meeting that Capt. Smith never talked to Japasaw, only his brother.  Japasaw never became the Great King of Patawomeck.  He appears to have been the Lesser Chief or King until his death.  The sacred oral history of the Mattaponi, some of which has recently been published by Dr. Linwood Custalow and Angela Daniel, states that Japasaw was a very close friend of Chief Powhatan, but was not his brother.  Therefore, if Japasaw was not the brother of Opitchipam and Powhatan, how could his own brother, the Great King of Patawomeck, have been their brother, per his own statement?  He was not their brother by blood but was their brother by marriage to their eldest sister!  He was the father of Powhatan’s favorite wife, Winganuske.

When the Patawomecks broke away from the Powhatan Federation in 1622 and allied with the English, they no longer were subject to having their rulers appointed.  They held to the system of the matrilineal society and used it internally in their own tribe, just as they had done long before they became a part of the Powhatan Federation and were allied with the Piscataway Tribe.  As their bloodlines were then very much a part of the Powhatans, they continued that royal female bloodline.  We know from the writings of Henry Spelman that Japasaw had two wives.  One was named Paupauwiske, who had a baby son when Spelman was living with them.  We do not know the name of the other wife, but we do know something of her identity.  When Pocahontas was living with the Patawomecks at the time that she was captured by the English in 1613, Capt. Ralph Hamor wrote about her capture.  In his narrative, he mentioned that Japasaw had been given a copper kettle and other items by Capt. Argall for delivering Pocahontas to them.  Hamor made the statement about Japasaw “that doubtlesse he would have betrayed his owne father for them…”  That tells us that Powhatan was not Japasaw’s own father.  However, Hamor then states that “his [Japasaw’s] father had then eight of our English men, many swords, peeces, and other tooles, which he had at severall times by treacherous murdering of our men, taken from them…”  The man who had eight of the Englishmen was none other than Chief Powhatan.  That was the main reason for capturing Pocahontas, to use her as a bribe to get the eight Englishmen back safely from Powhatan.  If Powhatan was not “Japasaw’s own father” by Hamor’s own words, then why did Hamor then call Powhatan the father of Japasaw?  It was because Powhatan was Japasaw’s father-in-law by having married one of his daughters, a sister of Pocahontas.  By marrying one of Winganuske’s daughters, Japasaw was seeing to it that one of his own children might have a chance of becoming the ruler of the Federation.  His son by a daughter of Powhatan did indeed become the Great King of Patawomeck after the Patawomeck Tribe had broken away from the Federation.  The only way that could have happened was for Wahanganoche’s mother to have been of the royal bloodline.  It was possible for the son of a Lesser Chief to take over his father’s position, even without being of the royal bloodline, but to become the supreme chief, a son of a male ruler must have had the royal bloodline through his mother.  This close connection of Japasaw and Pocahontas, along with the fact that Pocahontas married Japasaw’s younger brother, Kocoum, was the reason that Pocahontas was living with the Patawomecks at the time of her capture.  Japasaw was the granduncle and the double brother-in-law of Pocahontas.  The fact that the Indians married their nieces in order to give their children a chance to rule may seem like incest to us now, but it was perfectly acceptable to them.  Many of the great civilizations of the world carried on the same practice.  It was even acceptable for a man to marry his half-sister, as long as she did not have the same mother.

I cannot give all of supporting evidence, but the story goies that Pocahontas took a number of her relatives to England, with her, including her first cousin, daughter of Powhatan's sister, name unknown (but Leonard-reacher)called her Rachel as a possibility, since that name came down in the Crowshaw family. The Indians all took Christian names upon baptism. Pocahontas' name was Rebecca. Anyway, Pocahontas and her relatives stayed at the esate of Lord Delaware, Thomas West, in England, were Rachel supposedly bore an illegitimat son by Thomas West called Toby West or his Indian name, Totopotomoi. Rachel ended up marrying Joseph Croshaw and moved back to Virginia. Her daughter, Unity Croshaw, married Col. John West, nephew of Lord Delaware. Before marriage to Unity. John West has a known illegitimate son, John West by Cockacoeske Queen of the Pamunkeys. Cockacoeske was also married at one time to Totopotomoi,

Pocahontas' son, Thomas Rolfe, moved back to Va. where he had a daughter, Jane, who was ofen cared for by Unity (Croshaw) West. The connections seem to be endless.Rachel would have been in line for the ruling position of the Pamumkeys.
When Totopotomoi took over, it would mean tht his mother had to be dead. Checked the Croshaw's family and sure enough, at the time Totopotomoe took over, Joseph Crowshaw's first wife had recently died.
Also, you willsee in Cavalier's and Pioneers by Nugent that Toby West has a paptent for 500 acres of land that was later taken up by Col. Joseph Crowshaw. One of the early writings states that Totopotomoi's land was overtaken by an English Colonel.
Somehow, that 500 acres to have gotten back to Cockacoeske's son, John West, By Col. John West, as Indian John West left a will in Stafford Co. in which he left 500 acres "at Pamunkey" to his son.
Also, Col. Joseph Crosshaw's father, Raleigh Croshaw, appears to have had an Indian wife (not Joseph's mother, howver) fromhis long residence with the Patawoneck Tribe in Va. William Crowshaw, the Indian, was probably a son by the Indian marriage of Raleigh Crowshaw. This information was supplied to me by William L. Deyo Historian
https://herebedragons.weebly.com/coloni ... rants.html