Rachel Powhatan Croshaw
"Cousin to Pocahontus"
Abt. 1570 - 1624 ·Rachel Powhatan Croshaw is described in supplied family-tree notes as a cousin of Pocahontas. Her birth, parentage, marriages, children, death, and burial are uncertain, and several claims about her life are presented in the notes as tradition, interpretation, or unsupported family-tree assertions.
The notes report that Rachel accompanied Pocahontas on her 1616 trip to England. They also attribute a son, Toby West, identified there as Chief Totopotomoy of the Pamunkey, to Rachel and Thomas West, 3rd Lord de la Warr, about 1616. These are family-tree claims in the supplied material rather than documented conclusions.
According to tribal historians cited in the notes, Rachel later married Col. Joseph Croshaw, described as a burgess, and became the mother of several of his children. Unity Croshaw is identified as a possible child, not a certain one. Some accounts further say that Unity married John West II, described in the notes as a nephew of Thomas West, Lord de la Warr.
William Deyo stated that Rachel was not Pocahontas's sister but her cousin. He believed that, to share the matrilineal royal bloodline, she would have been a daughter or granddaughter of Powhatan's sister. Deyo further believed that this sister was the wife of the Great King of Patawomeck. This represents Deyo's interpretation as quoted in the supplied notes and does not establish Rachel's parentage.
Rachel's death date is unknown. Although the supplied life-date heading gives 1624, the notes report that several Ancestry.com family trees give 1646 without showing sources. No known evidence in the supplied material identifies her burial place. The notes speculate that she could have been buried at the Pamunkey reservation because tradition places the remains of earlier Pamunkey leaders, including Chief Opchanacanough and the great Powhatan, in the burial mound there, and because her son Totopotomoy is said to be there. However, the notes expressly state that she is not known to have been buried on the reservation.
Historical context
The supplied notes place Rachel in the early seventeenth-century world of Pocahontas, the Pamunkey, Patawomeck, and the West and Croshaw families. They state that the Pamunkey reservation was officially established as the tribe's permanent home as early as 1648. That date is later than the reported 1616 journey to England and is also later than the 1624 date in the supplied life-date heading; it does not establish Rachel's burial there.
Sources & research
Original Family Tree Maker notes supplied for Rachel Powhatan Croshaw.
William Deyo, identified in the supplied notes as official Pamunkey tribal historian: “Rachel Powhatan would not have been a sister of Pocahontas but a cousin (born about 1600). For Rachel to have the bloodline of the matrilineal royal succession, she had to have been a daughter or granddaughter of Powhatan's sister, whom I believe was the wife of the Great King of Patawomeck. When the King of Patawomeck called Opitchipam his brother, it was because he was actually his brother by marriage rather than his real brother, as by the words of Powhatan, himself, he only had 3 brothers by his mother (Opitchipam, Opechancanough, and Keckatough).”
Ancestry.com family trees: Reportedly give a death date of 1646; the supplied notes state that sources were not shown.