Elizabeth Tilley
Elizabeth Tilley was baptized at Henlow, a village in Bedfordshire, on 30 August 1607. The parish register reads "Eliz d Jn & Joan TILLY." Her father, John Tilley, was a husbandman and the son of Robert Tilley, a Henlow yeoman. Her mother, Joan, was born Joan Hurst and had been widowed once before. Elizabeth was the youngest of five Tilley children. Her sister Rose died young; her brothers John and Robert and a second sister Rose were older. Her half-sister Joan Rogers, her mother's daughter by a first marriage, was thirteen years older.
Elizabeth Tilley came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620 with her parents. William Bradford's list of the passengers reads: "John Tillie, and his wife; and Eelizabeth, their doughter." Her uncle Edward Tilley and his wife Ann came on the same ship.
Her father was one of the men in the shallop that found Plymouth harbor in December 1620. Within months both her parents were dead. Bradford wrote that "John Tillie and his wife both dyed a litle after they came ashore." Edward Tilley and his wife died too.
She married John Howland, who had come as a servant in Governor Carver's household. Bradford, writing about 1651, said: "His servant, John Howland, maried the doughter of John Tillie, Elizabeth, and they are both now living, and have 10. children, now all living." Their eldest daughter, Desire, married John Gorham.
In the division of the colony's cattle in 1627 the fourth lot fell to "John Howland & his company," and the first names in it were John, his wife Elizabeth, their son John and their daughter Desire.
The family lived at Rocky Nook, in Plymouth. When John Howland died early in 1673 he left her the house and lands there for her life and made her his executrix. On 5 March 1673 she gave bond to the colony for three hundred pounds as his administratrix. Two of her sons-in-law, John Chipman and John Gorham, were her sureties. She signed by printing her initials, E H, as her mark.
In old age she was living at Swansea, where her daughter Lydia was the wife of James Browne. There, on 17 December 1686, "being Seventy nine yeares of Age," she made her will. She died at Swansea on 21 December 1687, at Lydia's house. The will was proved on 10 January 1688.
Her grave is marked in the Ancient Little Neck Cemetery at Riverside, in East Providence, Rhode Island. A modern stone there quotes her will's charge to her children. In 1989 the Pilgrim John Howland Society placed a plaque in St Mary's church, Henlow, to "John and Joan Tilley of this parish" and "their daughter Elizabeth baptized 30 August 1607 wife of John Howland."
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Cite: Heirology, "Elizabeth Tilley (1607-1687)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/elizabeth-tilley-1607-1687-5de4e7.