Families Members of the Adkins and Bradby families formed the heart of the tribal organization in 1901.The Bradby surname also is common among the Pamunkeys, and important family ties link the two groups.Other common surnames in the tribe include Canaday, Jefferson, Jones, Holmes, Stewart and Wynn.
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Five of the children of Chief William Henry Adkins appear in this photograph taken by Smithsonian ethnographer James Mooney (1900). Their mother, Virginia Stalkins Green Bradby Adkins, was born in Charles City County, but left at an early age when her father Henry Bradby moved to Canada. The family lived with the Ojibwas near Windsor, Ontario. Virginia Bradby and several others of her family returned to Virginia following the Civil War. Photo courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, negative no. 858.
Thomas Allen Adkins and his wife Nancy J. Jones were photographed in 1900 by James Mooney with their sons, including the eldest, Ozias Westmore, who later became chief of the tribe. Photo courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, negative no. 854.
Alexander J. Bradby, Jr. and his wife Sarah Jean Adkins (front center) are photographed by James Mooney in 1900 with some of their children, grandchildren and a Stewart son-in-law. Sarah Jean Adkins Bradby was a sister of Thomas Adkins, pictured above. Photo courtesy National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, negative no. 857.
Chickahominy intermarriage with other tribes in Virginia has been fostered by pan-Indian activities.Anthropologist Albert Speck photographed this family comprised of a Chickahominy woman and a Mattaponi man in the 1920s.Photo courtesy Charles City County Center for Local History.
Chickahominies have also intermarried with tribal groups outside Virginia.Attendance by numerous Chickahominies at Bacone College in Oklahoma fostered such marriages and today some members of the tribe claim ancestry in other Nations, such as the Cherokee and Seneca.Minnie Adkins, a Chickahominy woman, met and married Samuel Red Cloud-Owen, a San Blass Indian, in New York City.Minnie and husband regularly visited Charles City and Sam became instrumental in the revival of Native dancing.The revival of dancing, in turn, led to the establishment of the annual Pow-wow.Photos courtesy Charles City County Center for Local History.
Most Chickahominies, however, have married within the tribe.Elias Adkins and his wife Agness Frances Bradby Adkins are pictured here most likely on their wedding day in 1910.Frances’ father, Porterfield Bradby was born in Canada before the Civil War and moved to Charles City along with other members of the Bradby family when they returned after the war’s end.Photos courtesy Charles City County Center for Local History.