Ancestors

John Howland

John Howland was a son of Henry Howland of Fenstanton, a village in Huntingdonshire. His baptism does not survive, because the Fenstanton registers begin in 1612. His brothers were Arthur, George, Humphrey, Henry and Simon, and his sister was Margaret. Humphrey became a draper in London and took two of the younger brothers as apprentices. Humphrey's will of 1646 left "my brother John Howland" four pounds out of a debt owed by a Mr. Ruck of New England, and the same to their brothers Arthur and Henry, who had also settled in Plymouth Colony. He was probably born about 1598. He came as a servant, which means he was young, and Bradford called him "a lustie yonge man."

John Howland came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. William Bradford's passenger list places him in the household of the first governor: "Mr. John Carver; Kathrine, his wife; Desire Minter; and 2. man-servants, John Howland, Roger Wilder."

On the crossing he was nearly lost. In one of the autumn storms the ship lay hulled, drifting without sail. Howland came up above the gratings, and a roll of the ship threw him into the sea. He caught hold of the topsail halyards trailing over the side and held on, several fathoms under water, until the crew hauled him up and got him aboard with a boat hook. Bradford wrote that he "lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and commone wealthe."

In December 1620 he was one of the eighteen men in the shallop who went looking for a place to settle. With him were Myles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, and John and Edward Tilley. They met the Nauset at Eastham on 8 December, sheltered on Clark's Island, and landed at Plymouth on the 11th.

John Carver and his wife died within months of landing. Howland married Elizabeth Tilley, whose parents had also died that first winter. Bradford, writing about 1651, reported: "His servant, John Howland, maried the doughter of John Tillie, Elizabeth, and they are both now living, and have 10. children, now all living; and their eldest daughter hath 4. children." That eldest daughter was Desire, wife of John Gorham.

Howland became one of the colony's leading men. Bradford names him among the Undertakers, the handful of colonists who took over the colony's debt to its London merchants in exchange for its trade, and he worked the beaver trade with Isaac Allerton. He lived at Rocky Nook, in Plymouth. His will left the house there to his wife Elizabeth for life, then to his son Joseph. Each of his six daughters received twenty shillings: Desire Gorham, Hope Chipman, Elizabeth Dickenson, Lydia Browne, Hannah Bosworth and Ruth Cushman. The Gorham genealogy gives his death as 23 February 1673.

On 11 November 1620, before anyone went ashore, he signed the agreement the passengers made at Cape Cod to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic." It is now called the Mayflower Compact. The earliest list of the signers, printed by Nathaniel Morton in 1669, has "John Howland" next to "Stephen Hopkins" and just before "Edward Tilly, John Tilly."

The colony's own record of his death reads: "The 23th of February, 1672, Mr John Howland, Senir, of the towne of Plymouth, deceased. Hee was a godly man and an ancient professor in the wayes of Christ; hee liued vntill hee attained aboue eighty yeares in the world. Hee was one of the first comers into this land, and proued a vsefull instrument of good in his place, & was the last man that was left of those that came ouer in the shipp called the May Flower, that liued in Plymouth; hee was with honor intered att the towne of Plymouth on the 25 of February, 1672." By the modern calendar he died on 5 March 1673. A later stone on Burial Hill quotes the entry.

If John Howland is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "John Howland (1598-1673)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-howland-1598-1673-859eca.