It's All Relative: Richmond Families (Pt. 1)

What defines a Richmond family in 2016? The classic nuclear family has been left behind along with our black and white television sets and tuna noodle casseroles. This exhibition explores the changing definition and composition of what makes a family in our Richmond community over the past five centuries.

In 1616, the Virginia Company invited Lady Rebecca (Matoka or Pocahontas) (ca. 1597-1617), a daughter of the native leader Powhatan and wife of Englishman John Rolfe (1585-1622), to visit England with her family. They were entertained by the Anglican bishop of London and introduced to England's royal family.

In 1613, Matoka, assuming the name Rebecca, converted to Christianity and assimilated into colonial life. On April 5, 1614, John Rolfe married Rebecca. This is the first documented marriage of an English colonist and a Native American Indian. Surviving documents indicate that John Rolfe struggled with the moral repercussions of marrying, in his words, a "heathen." A letter sent to the royal governor requested his approval of this first recorded church union between an American native and an English colonist in Virginia.

Early in 1617, the Rolfes prepared leave King James’s court and return to their family home in Virginia. However, Rebecca sickened and died at Gravesend. Her child, Thomas (1615-1680?), was educated in England, married and later returned to Virginia, where he attempted to connect with his mother’s family. Thomas and Jane had one child, Jane (1650-1676), who married Robert Bolling in 1675. Soon after giving birth to her son, John, in 1676, Jane died. Through John Bolling (1676-1749) many people today can claim descent from Powhatan and his daughter Matoaka (Pocahontas).

The Powhatan, also known as Virginia Algonquians, are a Native American people in Eastern Virginia. It is estimated that there were approximately 18,000 Powhatan people in the region when the English settled Jamestowne in 1607. One member of this community was Mataoka (Pocahontas, later Lady Rebecca Rolfe), a daughter of the paramount chief Wahunsunacawh (Powhatan).

Powhatan created a powerful organization by affiliating 30 tributary peoples, whose territory was much of eastern Virginia. This territory was home to a large extended family of first people who had their lives forever changed by the arrival of the English.

According to the family Bible, Scottish immigrant John Murchie (1750-1831) of Manchester, Virginia, married Catherine Harrison, a daughter of William Harrison of Virginia, in 1782. This oil portrait and its companion of John (currently on view in This Is Richmond, VA) are attributed to the artist John Durand. An English tradition, wedding portraits were commissioned by the colonial gentry class not only as a symbol of status but also to illustrate family connections.

John and Catherine produced five children beginning with the birth of Martha in 1783. In 1791, Catherine died following the birth of their youngest daughter Catherine (d. 1792). John Murchie remarried to Susanna Temple in 1804.

A Family Bible contains successive generations’ recording details about a family's history. This information usually consists of marriages, births, deaths, baptisms and confirmations. Other items, such as letters, newspaper clippings, photographs and even pressed flowers might be placed inside the Bible as mementos of family events. They were common in the 19th century. Today, Family Bibles are sought out genealogical resources.

This Bible was presented to Judith Ann Buck Murchie (b.1800) by her mother Judith Ann Hughes Buck (1768-1833) in 1827. The handwritten family register starts with the marriage of Matthew Murchie to Anna Boyd in March 1680 and continues to the last recorded entry of the death of Marion R. Murchie in 1906.

Note the connection to the portrait of Catherine Harrison Murchie in this exhibition and to the companion portrait of John Murchie (both recorded in the notes) in the Valentine’s exhibition, This Is Richmond, VA.

The left forearm and hand with wedding band of Margery Jane Porterfield Taylor (1847-1927), the sister of the donors. It was fashionable for wealthy Victorian women to have their hand recorded in marble by a prominent sculptor when on the Grand Tour. The Taylors were in Rome, Italy, in 1886 where they met the Richmond-born sculptor Sir Moses Ezekiel.

Moses Jacob Ezekiel was born in Richmond, Virginia, to Jacob and Catherine (deCastro) Ezekiel. He studied anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia. In 1869, Ezekiel enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy of Art (Berlin, Germany). Admitted into the Society of Artists in Berlin on the merits of his bust of George Washington, he was the first foreigner to win the Prize of Rome. He died in Italy in 1917.

Harlem Renaissance sculptor Leslie Garland Bolling (1898-1955) was born in Surry County, Virginia, to Clinton C. Bolling, a blacksmith, and his wife Mary. Leslie Bolling’s work reflected everyday themes, family life and shared values of southern African-American culture during the Jim Crow era.

In 1948, Leslie Bolling married Ethelyn M. Bailey, and the couple settled in New York. The couple had no children. Bolling died on September 27, 1955. His body was returned to Richmond for burial following his death in 1955.

This Loetz silver overlay art glass vase was a 1902 wedding gift to Mary Alice Larcombe (1882-1906) and Blair Burwell Stringfellow (1872-1946). Miss Larcombe was the daughter of John Southey Larcombe and Mary Alice Griffith of Washington, DC.

The Stringfellows had one child, Blair, before Mary Alice’s death in 1906 devastated the young family. Stringfellow married Elizabeth Prussia Hargrave (1890 – 1984) and Elizabeth raised her stepson along with his younger half siblings. Blair Burwell Stringfellow, Jr. (1905-1960), grew up to become a partner in the family investment banking firm Scott & Stringfellow (founded 1893).