The Biography of My Life!

My life began in these mountains. My name is Lawrence(Larry) Milton Pizzuto with the acquired nicknames of Jonas, Jacinth, (or in Spanish Jacinto, a yellow-red to red-brown variety of gemstone), and Jason from the years I spent singing on records and television and traveling across the United States, Europe, South America, Eastern Europe, and Russia and this is my story. I am a native of the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky where I was born, as well as a city boy growing up in the nation’s capitol in Washington D.C.

My mama’s family linage dates back more than two hundred years to the early pioneer settlers of the original colonies of North America. I am a descendant of the Bowling family who migrated from the Virginia colony of the northeast tidewater Chesapeake Bay area, into the southwest regions of the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky.

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My mother’s father Eli Milton Lyons, was born December 23, 1888 and died December 18 1973. His wife, Laura Belle Gross Lyons was born 1887, and died 23 November 1958. They were related to these early pioneers who spread out into uncharted territories to explore and discover the land. From my mother’s side of the family, John Bolling, was a descendant of John Rolfe (1585-1622), an English plantation owner at the Jamestown settlement, of the Virginia colony.

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John Rolfe is known for being the first person to cultivate tobacco in Virginia. He established the plantation, “Varina Farms”, where he successfully cultivated a new strain of tobacco. He and his wife, Rebecca Rolfe, also instrumental in playing an important role in the social cooperation between the European colonial settlers, and the surrounding native tribes of the region.

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Prior to her marriage to John Rolfe, Rebecca had spent many of her earliest years interacting within the colonies and helping to secure amiable relations between the tribal persons and the settlers. Previously, Rebecca was recognized by colony residents as a native american princess whom they referred to as, Pocahontas. She was the daughter of Wahunsenacah aka Chief Powhatan, of the Algonquian Pequot Tribal Nation, a federation of native tribal families who inhabited the east coastal tidewater regions long before the English arrived. During the ‘First Anglo-Powhatan War’, Pocahontas was taken captive by the The Virginia Company of London at the Jamestown settlement. During this incarceration she converted to Christianity and secured her freedom. She chose the name Rebecca at her baptism, and continued living among the settlers at the settlement. Shortly afterwards, she married the widower John Rolfe, at the age of about 17 or 18. At the time their marriage was controversial among the English, as they gossiped among themselves saying; “how could an English commoner have the audacity to marry a princess?” In time, Rebecca bore their son, Thomas Rolfe. The family eventually traveled by ship to England by invitation to have an audience with the King of England. One goal of The Virginia Company of London was to convert Native Americans to Christianity which also helped end the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Company decided to bring Rebecca to England as a symbol of the tamed New World “savage” and to show the success of the Virginia colony.

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King James VI and I was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots who was the cousin, of Queen Elizabeth I and succeeded Elizabeth to the throne of England after her death. At the audience with King James, the King was so unprepossessing that Pocahontas did not realize whom it was she had met until it was explained to her afterwards. Unfortunately, while preparing for their return back to the colonies, Pocahontas died from smallpox disease at age 21.

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Thomas Rolfe stayed in England after his mother’s passing but returned to Virginia as an adult to claim his inheritance as landlord of Varina Farms. He married Jane Poythress, and she gave birth to their daughter, Jane Rolfe, born in Varina, Henrico County, Virginia in 1650. Jane Rolfe Bolling 10 Oct 1650 Varina, Henrico County, Virginia died 26 Jan 1676 (aged 25). Thomas’ father remarried again after Rebecca’s passing and had other children, but the linage which I descended from, is that of Jane Rolfe.

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Jane Rolfe married Robert Bolling of Prince George County, Virginia. Their son, John Fairfax Bolling was born in 1676. He married Mary Kennon who bore him six surviving children, each of whom also successfully married and had surviving children. These all married and migrated into the south and west areas where their descendants mixed and married into my mother’s side of the family of which I am part.

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Robert Bolling was born December 26, 1646 – died July 17, 1709 Kippax Plantation, Charles City County, Virginia, Colonial America, Burial place; Petersburg, Virginia.

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John Fairfax Bolling was born 27 Jan 1676 Charles City County, Virginia. He died 20 Apr 1729 (aged 53) in Virginia. His burial place was; Cobbs Cemetery Enon, Chesterfield County, Virginia. John Fairfax Bolling (January 27, 1676 to April 20, 1729) was the second son and only surviving child of Colonel Robert Bolling and Jane (Rolfe) Bolling. His maternal grandfather was Thomas Rolfe, the son of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. John Bolling was the great grandson of Pocahontas. He was a colonist, farmer, and politician in the Virginia Colony. He was born at Kippax Plantation, in Charles City County, Virginia, a site which is now within the corporate limits of the City of Hopewell. He made his home at the Bolling family plantation “Cobbs” just west of Point of Rocks on the north shore of the Appomattox River downstream from present-day Petersburg, Virginia. (Cobbs was located in Henrico County until the area south of the James River was subdivided to form Chesterfield County in 1749).

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John Bolling Jr. (1700–1757) married Elizabeth Blair on August 1, 1728 and had at least nine children, including John Bolling).

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James Thomas Pocahontas Powhattan Bolling. Bowling was born on January 9, 1756, in North Carolinieda. James Thomas Pocahontas Bowling – 9 Jan 1756 Henrico County, Virginia. Died 1804 (aged 47–48) Clay County, Kentucky. Buried at John Gilbert Cemetery Marcum, Clay County, Kentucky.

Sicily

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My father’s parents were both Sicilian. They traveled by ship to America at the beginning of the twentieth century from their little mountain villages of Ficarra and Ucria near the north eastern harbor city of Messina, Sicily.

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My father was born in the United States in 1912. He met my mother while in his last years of university and after graduating, they married and gave birth to five children. Their last boy child before me passed away with pneumonia at eighteen months old. I became their sixth child with a nine and a half year gap between me and my closest older sibling.

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My father taught his students for all ages and grades in a small one-room schoolhouse. It’s location was within walking distance to the mountain hollers where my mother’s family lived and had their property. This is also where my father’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth, was in the classroom. He built the house we lived in and the barn for our cow with his own hands. Our vegetable garden stretched from the front door of our house to the road which passed through the mountains 15 miles to the nearest town, Pikeville, Kentucky. The John’s Creek River full of freshwater Pumpkinseed Sunperch fish, flowed at the back of our house where my two older brothers caught their lunch. My two older sisters milked the cow and helped tend to the garden and take turns taking care of me, their baby brother, after school. My mother was the founder of the only church house built in the little community of John’s Creek and Penson’s Branch. My mother’s brother’s and sister’s families also lived in these mountains to lend our family a helping hand whenever there was a special need. These are my roots and the family origins from whence I come.

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My father decided to change professions in order to better support his growing family. When I was still very young, my parents made the big decision to move our whole family to the nation’s capitol, Washington D.C. where there were more job opportunities for them. My father took up work as a building construction brick mason as was his father before him. This is the city where my mother began to work at a position she attained at the United States Treasury Department! Unfortunately, after only a few short years living in the capitol, my father died of a brain tumor. By the time I turned seven, my mother remarried and relocated us to the suburbs of Vienna, Virginia, where I spent my formative years growing up attending Cedar Lane Elementary School, Henry David Thoreau Junior High, and James Madison High School.

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The man who became my step-father was a Hensley from Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, the first cousin of the late Country Music Megastar, Patsy Cline. As a young boy growing up, my personal musical preference was the Rock ‘N’ Roll of Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly, and Ricky Nelson, but because of the musical influences of my step-father who was also a multi-instrumentalist musician, I also grew up with the musical influences of listening to Pasty Cline, Buck Owens, and Porter Wagoner on the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night, followed by mandatory faithful Southern Baptist church services every Sunday morning.