Robert Bolling

Colonel Robert Bolling (December 26, 1646 – July 17, 1709) was a wealthy early American settler planter and merchant. His mother was Mary Carie; his father was John Bolling born 1615. He was named after his grandfather Robert Bolling; his grandmother was Anne Clarke.

Ancestry and early life

Robert Bolling was the son of John and Mary (Clarke) Bolling. He was born at Tower Street, All Hallows Barking Parish, in London on December 26, 1646. His father John, was one of the Bollings of Bolling Hall, near Bradford, England. Robert's ancestry could be traced to Robert Bolling, Esquire, who died in 1485 and was buried in the family vault in the church of Bradford. On October 2, 1660, at the age of fourteen, Bolling arrived in the colony of Virginia. In 1674, he married Thomas Rolfe's daughter, Jane. Their son John Bolling was born January 26, 1676. Jane is said to have died shortly after the birth.

John Bolling (January 26, 1676 – April 20, 1729) married Mary Kennon, daughter of Richard Kennon and Elizabeth Worsham, and they had seven children. He was an ancestor to First Lady Edith Bolling Wilson.

Robert Bolling (poet)

Robert Bolling (1738 – July–August 1775) was a poet, planter and politician from the English colony of Virginia. A grandson of Robert Bolling (1646–1709), he was born in Virginia and sent to England for his education. On his return to Virginia, he studied law, but soon took over at Chellowe, a tobacco plantation in Buckingham County, Virginia inherited from his father.

Though he published at least 35 poems in English periodicals during his lifetime, most of his works remained in manuscript, and remain unpublished. His papers are owned by the University of Virginia Library and the Henry E. Huntington Library. His book A Memoir of a Portion of the Bolling Family in England and Virginia was published posthumously, in 1868; it was originally written in French and translated by a descendant.

Critical interest in Bolling's literary productions has increased along with a general resurgence in interest, among scholars of early American literature, in Southern and other non-New England colonial poets.