John Rolfe progressive development at Henricus. The first harvest of four barrels of tobacco leaf was exported from Virginia to England in March 1614. Soon afterwards, Rolfe and others were exporting vast quantities of the new cash crop. New plantations began growing along the James River, where export shipments could use wharfs along the river. Rolfe married Pocahontas, daughter of the local Native American leader Powhatan, on 5 April 1614. A year earlier, Alexander Whitaker had converted Pocahontas to Christianity and renamed her "Rebecca" when she had her baptism. Richard Buck officiated their wedding. Powhatan gave the newlyweds property just across the
History of Jamestown, Virginia (1607–99) England several years earlier, which served to greatly improve relations between the Virginia Native Americans and the colonists for several years. However, when she and John Rolfe took their young son Thomas Rolfe on a public relations trip to England to help raise more investment money for the Virginia Company, she became ill and died just as they were leaving to return to Virginia. Her interment was at St George's Church in Gravesend. What became known as the "Starving Time" in the Virginia Colony occurred during the winter of 1609–10, when only 60 of 500 English colonists survived. The colonists,