Gravesend was granted, allowing the men of the town to operate boats between London and the town; these became known as the "Long Ferry". It became the preferred form of passage, because of the perils of road travel (see below). On Gravesend's river front are the remains of a Tudor fort built by command of King Henry VIII in 1543. On 21 March 1617, John Rolfe and Rebecca (aka Princess Pocahontas) with their two-year-old son, Thomas, boarded a ship in London bound for the Commonwealth of Virginia; the ship had only sailed as far as Gravesend before Rebecca fell fatally ill,
James Rolfe (legislator) Schleisinger Weil, a Democrat from Schleisingerville. Matilda Rolfe died in 1859, by which time the two of them had had four children, three daughters and one son. Rolfe died on April 1, 1888 at the Rock County Asylum in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin. James Rolfe (legislator) James Rolfe (1821 – April 1, 1888) was an American farmer from Polk, Wisconsin who spent a single one-year term in 1855 as an independent member of the Wisconsin State Senate from the 4th District. Rolfe, born in Hillsboro, Massachusetts in 1821, was the son of Stephen and Mary A. (Reed) Rolfe. He came to