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John Howland Born: 23 Feb 1592-1599, Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, England
Marr: 1623, Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Died: 23 Feb 1672, Plymouth, Plymouth, Massachusetts
Elizabeth Tilley
Elizabeth Tilley
Born: Aug 1607, Henlow, Central Bedfordshire, England
Died: 21 Dec 1687, Swansea, Bristol, Massachusetts
“The
Mayflower departed Plymouth, England on September 6/16, 1620. The small,
100-foot ship had 102 passengers and a crew of about 30-40 in extremely cramped
conditions. By the second month out, the ship was being buffeted by strong
westerly gales, causing the ship's timbers to be badly shaken with caulking
failing to keep out sea water, and with passengers, even in their berths, lying
wet and ill. This, combined with a lack of proper rations and unsanitary
conditions for several months, attributed to what would be fatal for many,
especially the majority of women and children. On the way there were two
deaths, a crew member and a passenger, but the worst was yet to come after
arriving at their destination when, in the space of several months, almost half
the passengers perished in cold, harsh, unfamiliar New England winter. During the voyage there was a turbulent
storm during which John Howland fell overboard. He managed to grab a topsail
halyard that was trailing in the water and was hauled back aboard safely. There
is a painting depicting this called "Howland Overboard" by maritime artist
Mike Hayward.”
The first winter in North America proved
deadly for the Pilgrims as half their number perished. The Carver family with
whom John lived, survived the winter of 1620-21. However, the following spring,
on an unusually hot day in April, Governor Carver, according to William
Bradford, came out of his cornfield feeling ill. He passed into a coma and
"never spake more". His wife, Kathrine, died soon after her husband.
The Carvers' only children died while they lived in Leiden and it is possible
that Howland inherited their estate. In 1621, after Carver's death, Howland
became a freeman. In 1624 he was considered the head of what was once the
Carver household when he was granted an acre for each member of the household
including himself, Elizabeth Tilley, Desire Minter, and a boy named William
Latham.
(c. Aug 1607 - December 21, 1687)
Elizabeth Tilley was one of the passengers on the historic
1620 voyage of the Mayflower. She was the daughter of Mayflower passenger John
Tilley and his wife Joan Hurst. and, although she was their youngest child,
appears to be the only one who survived until the voyage. She went on to marry
fellow Mayflower passenger John Howland, with whom she had ten children.
Because of their great progeny, she and her husband have millions of living
descendants today.
Mayflower Pilgrims
11th Great-Grandparents to Keith M. Chandler
John Howland (c. 1591 – February 23, 1672/3)
was a passenger on the Mayflower. He was an indentured servant and in later
years, the executive assistant and personal secretary to Governor John
Carver and accompanied the Separatists
and other passengers when they left England to settle in Plymouth,
Massachusetts.
He signed the Mayflower Compact and helped
found Plymouth Colony. After the passengers came ashore John Howland
became assistant to the governor over the new independent state created under
the compact. The act of Governor Carver in making a treaty with the great
Indian Sachem Massasoit was an exercise of sovereign power that John Howland
assisted in."
John Carver, the first governor of the
Plymouth Colony, died in April 1621. In
1626, Howland was a freeman and one of eight settlers who agreed to assume the
colony's debt to its investors in England in exchange for a monopoly of the fur
trade. He was elected deputy to the
General Court in consecutive years from 1641–1655 and again in 1658.
English Origins
John Howland was born in Fenstanton,
Huntingdonshire, England around 1592. He
was the son of Margaret and Henry Howland, and the brother of Henry and Arthur
Howland, who emigrated later from England to Marshfield, Massachusetts. Although Henry and Arthur Howland were
Quakers, John himself held to the original faith of the Puritans.
Speedwell and Mayflower
William Bradford, who was the governor of
Plymouth Colony for many years, wrote in Of Plymouth Plantation, that Howland
was a man-servant of John Carver. Carver was the deacon of the Separatists
church while the group resided in Leiden, Netherlands. At the time the Leiden
congregation left the Netherlands, on the Speedwell, Carver was in England securing
investments, gathering other potential passengers, and chartering the Mayflower
for the journey to North America. John Howland may have accompanied Carver's
household from Leiden when the Speedwell left Delfshaven for Southampton,
England, July, 1620. Ansel Ames in Mayflower and Her Log, said that Howland was
probably kin of Carver's and that he was more likely a steward or a secretary
than a servant.
The Separatists planned to travel to the New
World, on the Speedwell and the Mayflower. The Speedwell proved to be
unseaworthy and thus most of the passengers crowded onto the Mayflower.
In order to finance the voyage to the New
World, the Separatists had investors in England. They also had accepted
non-separatists to join them on the journey. These passengers, whom the
Separatists referred to as "strangers", made up half of those on the
Mayflower.
The Voyage
“The
Mayflower departed Plymouth, England on September 6/16, 1620. The small,
100-foot ship had 102 passengers and a crew of about 30-40 in extremely cramped
conditions. By the second month out, the ship was being buffeted by strong
westerly gales, causing the ship's timbers to be badly shaken with caulking
failing to keep out sea water, and with passengers, even in their berths, lying
wet and ill. This, combined with a lack of proper rations and unsanitary
conditions for several months, attributed to what would be fatal for many,
especially the majority of women and children. On the way there were two
deaths, a crew member and a passenger, but the worst was yet to come after
arriving at their destination when, in the space of several months, almost half
the passengers perished in cold, harsh, unfamiliar New England winter. During the voyage there was a turbulent
storm during which John Howland fell overboard. He managed to grab a topsail
halyard that was trailing in the water and was hauled back aboard safely. There
is a painting depicting this called "Howland Overboard" by maritime artist
Mike Hayward.”
On November 9/19, 1620, after about three months
at sea, including a month of delays in England, they spotted land, which was
the Cape Cod Hook, now called Provincetown Harbor. And after several days of
trying to get south to their planned destination of the Colony of Virginia,
strong winter seas forced them to return to the harbor at Cape Cod hook, where
they anchored on November 11/21. On November 11, 1620, the Mayflower Compact
was signed. John Howland was the thirteenth of the 41 "principal" men
to sign.
In Plymouth Colony
The first winter in North America proved
deadly for the Pilgrims as half their number perished. The Carver family with
whom John lived, survived the winter of 1620-21. However, the following spring,
on an unusually hot day in April, Governor Carver, according to William
Bradford, came out of his cornfield feeling ill. He passed into a coma and
"never spake more". His wife, Kathrine, died soon after her husband.
The Carvers' only children died while they lived in Leiden and it is possible
that Howland inherited their estate. In 1621, after Carver's death, Howland
became a freeman. In 1624 he was considered the head of what was once the
Carver household when he was granted an acre for each member of the household
including himself, Elizabeth Tilley, Desire Minter, and a boy named William
Latham.
In the several years after becoming a freeman,
he served at various times as selectman, assistant and deputy governor,
surveyor of highways, and as member of the fur committee. In 1626, he was asked
to participate in assuming the colony's debt to its investors to enable the
colony to pursue its own goals without the pressure to remit profits back to
England. The "undertakers" paid the investors £1,800 to relinquish
their claims on the land, and £2,400 for other debt. In return the group
acquired a monopoly on the colony's fur trade for six years.
Howland accompanied Edward Winslow in the
exploration of Kennebec River (in current day Maine), looking for possible fur
trading sites and natural resources that the colony could exploit. He also led
a team of men that built and operated a fur trading post there. While Howland
was in charge of the colony's northerly trading post, an incident occurred
there that Bradford described as "one of the saddest things that befell
them." A group of traders from Piscataqua (present day Portsmouth, New
Hampshire) led by a man named John Hocking, encroached on the trading ground
granted to Plymouth by a patent, by sailing their bark up the river beyond their
post. Howland warned Hocking to depart, but Hocking, brandishing a pistol and
using foul language, refused. Howland ordered his men to approach the bark in a
canoe and cut its cables setting it adrift. The Plymouth men managed to cut one
cable when Hocking put his pistol to the head of Moses Talbot, one of Howland's
men, and shot and killed him. Another of the Howland group shot Hocking to
death in response.
In Plymouth the Howlands lived on the north
side of Leyden Street. They lived for a short time in Duxbury and then moved to
Kingston where they had a farm on a piece of land referred to as Rocky Nook.
The farm burned down in 1675 during King Philip's War.[18] By that time, John
had died and Elizabeth moved in with her son, Jabez.
Before moving to Rhode Island, Jabez Howland
owned a home in Plymouth at 33 Sandwich Street. The house was built by Jacob
Mitchell about 1667 and was sold to Jabez Howland. John and Elizabeth had
wintered in the house, and Elizabeth lived there from 1675, when the Rocky Nook
farm was burned down, until Jabez sold it in 1680. It is the only house
standing in Plymouth in which Mayflower passengers lived.
Elizabeth Tilley
Until Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation was
discovered in 1856, it was presumed that John Howland's wife, formerly
Elizabeth Tilley, was the adopted daughter of the Carvers. (Her parents, uncle
and aunt who came to the New World died of sickness during the first winter.)
This mistake was even recorded on a gravestone that was erected for Howland on
Burial Hill, in 1836. However, the Bradford journal revealed that she was, in
fact, the daughter of John Tilley and his wife, Joan (Hurst). Elizabeth Tilley
Howland was born in Henlow, Bedfordshire, England where she was baptized in
August, 1607. She and her parents were passengers on the Mayflower. John Tilley
and his wife Joan both died the first winter as did his brother Edward Tilley
and wife Ann. This left Elizabeth an orphan and so she was taken in by the
Carver family. The Carvers died about a year later, and part of their estate
was inherited by their servant, John Howland, and Elizabeth became his ward. In
1623/24, she married John Howland.
Children
Desire was
born about 1624 and died in Barnstable October 13, 1683. She married John
Gorham in Plymouth by 1644 and had eleven children. She was buried at Cobb's
Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, Mass.
John was
born in Plymouth on February 24, 1626/7 and died in Barnstable after June 18,
1699. He married Mary Lee in Plymouth on October 26, 1651 and had ten children.
Hope was
born in Plymouth about 1629 and died in Barnstable on January 8, 1683. She
married John Chipman about 1647 and had twelve children. She was buried at
Lothrop Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, Mass.
Elizabeth was
born about 1631 and died in Oyster Bay, New York in October 1683.
Lydia was
born about 1633 and died in Swansea January, 1710/11. She married James
Brown(e) about 1655 and had four children.
Hannah was
born about 1637. She married Jonathan Bosworth in Swansea on July 6, 1661 and
had nine children.
Joseph was
born about 1640 and died in Plymouth in January 1703/04. He married Elizabeth
Southworth in Plymouth on December 7, 1664 and had nine children.
Jabez was
born about 1644 and died before February 21, 1711/12. He married Bethiah
Thatcher by 1669 and had eleven children.
Ruth was
born about 1646 and died before October 1679. She married Thomas Cushman in
Plymouth on November 17, 1664 and had three children.
Isaac was
born in Plymouth on November 15, 1649 and died in Middleboro on March 9,
1723/4. He married Elizabeth Vaughn by 1677 and had eight children. He was
buried at Cemetery At The Green, Middleboro, Mass.
The Jabez Howland House in Plymouth, Massachusetts, built c. 1667.
Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland lived there for five years.
Death and burial of John Howland and his wife
Elizabeth
John Howland died February 23, 1672/3 at the
age of 80, having outlived all other male Mayflower passengers except John
Cooke, son of Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke (John Cooke died in 1695). He
is presumed to be buried on Burial Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Tilley outlived her husband by 15
years. She died December 21 or 22, 1687, in the home of her daughter, Lydia
Brown, in Swansea, Massachusetts, and is buried in a section of that town which
is now in East Providence, Rhode Island.
References
Philbrick, Nathaniel (2006). Mayflower: a
story of courage, community, and war. pp. 32–37.
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation,
1620-1647, ed. by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Modern Library, (New York: Random
House, 1967),pp. 59, 68, 195, 263, 400-3, 415-417
Howland, Charles Roscoe (1946). Hawley, Emma
Boutelle, ed. A brief genealogical and biographical record of Charles Roscoe
Howland, brothers, and forebears of Roscoe Howland. Rutland, VT: Tuttle
Publishing Company. p. 14. Retrieved October 2014.
Philbrick. Pg. 102
Philbrick, Pg. 168
Hurd, Duane (1884). History of Plymouth
County, Massachusetts. J. W. Lewis & Co. p. 103.
Roser, Susan E. (1997). Mayflower Increasing.
Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 68.
Pilgrim Hall Museum
Pilgrim John Howland Society (1911).
The Howland Homestead.
Society of the Descendants of Pilgrim John
Howland, of the Ship Mayflower. pp. 7–8.
Ames, Ansel (2008). Mayflower and Her Log.
BiblioBazaar. p. 36.
Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its
History and People, 1620-1691, p. 413
George Ernest Bowman, The Mayflower Compact
and its signers, (Boston: Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants,
1920). Photocopies of the 1622, 1646 and 1669 versions of the document
Marble, Anne Russell (1920). The women who
came in the Mayflower. Pilgrim Press. pp. 85–88.
Stone. Pg. 7
Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation,
Edited by Harold Paget. (E.P. Dutton & Company. 1920), Pg. 253-256
Stone. Pgs. 7-9
Hurd. Pg. 357
Beaudry, Mary C. (1993). Documentary
Archeology in the New World. Cambridge University Press. p. 86.
"The Jabez Howland house". The
Pilgrim John Howland Society. Retrieved October 4, 2010.
Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her
Passengers, (Indiana: Xlibris Corp., 2006), pp. 237-238
Charles Edward Banks, The English Ancestry and
Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers p. 87
A genealogical profile of John Howland, (a
collaboration of Plimoth Plantation and New England Historic Genealogical
Society accessed 2013) /
Robert Anderson, Pilgrim Village Families
Sketch: John Howland (a collaboration between American Ancestors and New
England Historic Genealogical Society)/
Memorial of John Howland /
Memorial for Elizabeth Tilley
"Elizabeth Tilley Howland". The
Pilgrim John Howland Society.
Register of Members: Philadelphia Society of
Mayflower Descendants in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 1996, p. 57.
William Stocking and Gordon K. Miller. The
city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Volume 5, pg 562-563. Google Books.
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=glencoe&id=I607
(c. Aug 1607 - December 21, 1687)
11th Great-Grandmother to Keith M. Chandler
Early life
Elizabeth Tilley was born in Henlow, Bedfordshire, England
where she was baptized in August, 1607. According to parish records, she was
the youngest of five children born to her parents. She also had an older
step-sister, Joan, from her mother's first marriage to Thomas Rogers (no
relation to the Mayflower passenger of the same name).
It is likely that when she was a small girl, she moved with
her parents to the Netherlands, where her parents are documented as a member of
the Leiden Separatist congregation as well as her uncle Edward. Edward’s ward
Henry Samson may also have been a member.
On the Mayflower and in the New World
The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England on September 6/16,
1620. The small, 100-foot ship had 102 passengers and a crew of about 30-40 in
extremely cramped conditions. By the second month out, the ship was being
buffeted by strong westerly gales, causing the ship‘s timbers to be badly
shaken with caulking failing to keep out sea water, and with passengers, even
in their berths, lying wet and ill. This, combined with a lack of proper
rations and unsanitary conditions for several months, attributed to what would
be fatal for many, especially the majority of women and children. On the way
there were two deaths, a crew member and a passenger, but the worst was yet to
come after arriving at their destination when, in the space of several months,
almost half the passengers perished in cold, harsh, unfamiliar New England
winter.
On November 9/19, 1620, after about 3 months at sea,
including a month of delays in England, they spotted land, which was the Cape
Cod Hook, now called Provincetown Harbor. After several days of trying to get
south to their planned destination of the Colony of Virginia, strong winter
seas forced them to return to the harbor at Cape Cod hook, where they anchored
on November 11/21. The Mayflower Compact was signed that day. John Tilley was a
signatory to the Mayflower Compact, signing as “John Tilly.”
In the New World
Upon arriving in the New World, Elizabeth's father, John
took part in early expeditions of exploration around their new home and was
present at the first meeting between the Pilgrims and Native Americans, later
known as the First Encounter.
John Tilley and his wife Joan both died the first winter as
did his brother Edward Tilley and wife Ann. This left Elizabeth an orphan and
so she was taken in by the Carver family. The Carvers died about a year later,
and part of their estate was inherited by their servant, John Howland, and
Elizabeth became his ward.[6][7][8]
Family and children
Although the date of their marriage is not recorded, a few
years after their arrival in the New World, Elizabeth married John Howland c.
1623/4. She and John would go on to have ten children, all of whom would live
to adulthood, and well over seventy grandchildren. Elizabeth herself outlived
her husband by fifteen years, being one of the few original Pilgrims to live to
see King Philip's War.
Children
1) Desire was born about 1624 and died in Barnstable October
13, 1683. She married John Gorham in Plymouth by 1644 and had eleven children.
She was buried at Cobb’s Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, Mass.
2) John was born in Plymouth on February 24, 1626/7 and died
in Barnstable after June 18, 1699. He married Mary Lee in Plymouth on October
26, 1651 and had ten children.
3) Hope was born in Plymouth about 1629 and died in
Barnstable on January 8, 1683. She married John Chipman about 1647 and had
twelve children. She was buried at Lothrop Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, Mass.
4) Elizabeth was born about 1631 and died in Oyster Bay, New
York in October 1683.
Elizabeth married: Ephraim Hicks on September 13, 1649. He
died on December 12, 1649.
John Dickerson in Plymouth on July 10, 1651 and had nine
children.
5) Lydia was born about 1633 and died in Swansea January,
1710/11. She married James Brown(e) about 1655 and had four children.
6) Hannah was born about 1637. She married Jonathan Bosworth
in Swansea on July 6, 1661 and had nine children.
7) Joseph was born about 1640 and died in Plymouth in
January 1703/04. He married Elizabeth Southworth in Plymouth on December 7,
1664 and had nine children.
8) Jabez was born about 1644 and died before February 21,
1711/12. He married Bethiah Thatcher by 1669 and had eleven children.
9) Ruth was born about 1646 and died before October 1679.
She married Thomas Cushman in Plymouth on November 17, 1664 and had three
children.
10) Isaac was born in Plymouth on November 15, 1649 and died
in Middleboro on March 9, 1723/4. He married Elizabeth Vaughn by 1677 and had
eight children. He was buried at Cemetery At The Green, Middleboro, Mass.[8][9]
Notable descendants
Howland and wife, fellow Mayflower passenger Elizabeth
Tilley and ten children and 88 grandchildren. The couple founded one of the
three largest Mayflower progenies and their descendants have been
"associated largely with both the 'Boston Brahmins' and Harvard's
'intellectual aristocracy' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."[10]
John and Elizabeth Howland's direct descendants include
notable figures such as:
U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush,
and George W. Bush.
U.S. first ladies Edith Roosevelt and Barbara Bush
Continental Congress President Nathaniel Gorham
Former Governors Sarah Palin (Alaska) and Jeb Bush (Florida)
Poets Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an
Florence Earle Coates (a 9th generation descendant and a founding member (1896)
of the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
(SMDPA))
Actors/actresses
Christopher Lloyd, Humphrey Bogart, Maude Adams, Anthony Perkins, Lillian
Russell, and the Baldwin brothers (Alec, Daniel, William and Stephen). and
Chevy Chase.
President and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement
Joseph Smith, his wife Emma Hale, and President of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, Brigham Young
Opera singer and music educator William Howland
Conductor and pianist Robert Spano
Colin Tilley, American music video director for Riveting
Entertainment
Canada diplomat Warwick Fielding Chipman
Howland's descendants also include the wife of Theodore
Roosevelt Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, his wife Barbara Bush
and their son George W. Bush.
References
Eugene Aubrey
Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620-1691, (Salt Lake City:
Ancestry Publishing, 1986), p. 406
Eugene
Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620-1691, (Salt Lake
City: Ancestry Publishing, 1986), p. 413
George Ernest
Bowman, The Mayflower Compact and its signers, (Boston: Massachusetts Society
of Mayflower Descendants, 1920), Photocopies of the 1622, 1646 and 1669
versions of the document, pp. 7-19.
Caleb H.
Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers, (Indiana: Xlibris Corp., 2006), p.
235
Nathaniel
Philbrick, Mayflower: A story of Courage, Community and War, (New York: Viking
2006), pp. 70-73
Caleb H.
Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers, (Indiana: Xlibris Corp., 2006), pp.
237-238
Charles
Edward Banks, The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers (New York:
Grafton Press, 1929), p. 87
A
genealogical profile of John Howland, (a collaboration of Plimoth Plantation
and New England Historic Genealogical Society accessed 2013) /
Robert
Anderson, Pilgrim Village Families Sketch: John Howland (a collaboration
between American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society)/
Roberts,
Gary Boyd. "#55 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: Notable
Descendants of Henry and Margaret (----) Howland of Fenstanton,
Huntingdonshire, Parents of John Howland of the Mayflower". New England
Historic Genealogical Society. Retrieved October 3, 2010.
Register of
Members: Philadelphia Society of Mayflower Descendants in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania. 1996, p. 57.
William
Stocking and Gordon K. Miller. The city of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Volume
5, pg 562-563. Google Books.
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=glencoe&id=I607
Descendant
of Hope Howland Chipman, daughter of John and Elizabeth:born 1880, Montreal,
Quebec. Lawyer, Judge, Canadian Ambassador to Chile, 1944-45; Senior Delegate
to the Premier, United Nations Conference in San Francisco, CA in 1945; Past
President of The League of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland (disbanded, 1946);
Canadian Ambassador to Argentina, 1946-49; High Commissioner to India, 1949-52.
The Pilgrim
John Howland Society: Famous Descendents