John Howland

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John Howland (c. 1599 – 1673) was one of the settlers who travelled from England to North America on the Mayflower and helped found the Plymouth Colony.

Howland was born in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England. At the age of twenty-one, he was employed by John Carver, a Puritan minister who joined with William Bradford in bringing his congregation from Leiden, Netherlands to the New World. Howland, formally considered a servant, was in fact Carver's assistant in managing the migration.

Although he had arrived on the Mayflower as a servant to the Carver family, Howland was a young man determined to make his mark in the new world, arriving as neither a "stranger", nor a "saint" as the Pilgrims termed themselves. The arduous voyage very nearly ended his life as he was thrown overboard, due to turbulent seas, but managed to grab a topsail halyard that was trailing in the water and was hauled back aboard.

The Carver family with whom John lived, survived the terrible sickness of the first winter, during which many Pilgrims died. But 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 had no children. For this reason, Howland is thought to have inherited their estate. It has been said that he immediately "bought his freedom" but no record has survived.

In 1623/24, Howland married Elizabeth Tilley, by then a young lady of seventeen and the daughter of John Tilley and his wife Joan (Hurst) Rogers. Her parents had died the first winter and she had become the foster daughter of Governor Carver and his wife who were childless. By then he had prospered enough to also bring his brothers Arthur and Edward to the colony as well, solidly establishing the Howland family in the New World.

The following year Howland joined with Edward Winslow exploring the Kennebec River, looking for possible trading sites and natural resources that the colony could exploit. The year after that he was asked to participate in buying out the businessmen who had bankrolled the settlement of Plymouth ("Merchant Adventurers" was the term used at the time) so the colony could pursue its own goals without the pressure to remit profits back to England.

Then in 1626 the governor, William Bradford selected him to lead a team building a trading station on the Kennebec river and in 1628, Howland was elevated to the post of Assistant Governor.

Finally, in 1633 Howland, then thirty-four, was admitted as a freeman of Plymouth. He and Elizabeth had by then acquired significant landholdings around Plymouth and after his being declared a freeman they diligently acquired more. Howland served at various times as Assistant Governor, Deputy to the General Court, Selectman, Surveyor of Highways and member of the Fur Committee.

John and his wife Elizabeth had ten children, all of whom lived and had descendants. Their four sons were officers of the Plymouth Colony Militia, and served in other capacities.

Howland died on 23 February 1673, and was "with honour interred". This was accorded only to the leaders of the Colony, and meant that a squad of soldiers fired a volley over his grave. He is described in the records as a "godly man and an ardent professor in the ways of Christ."

[edit] Notable descendants

Howland's descendants include notable figures such as U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush; poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr. and his wife Emma Hale; actors/actresses Humphrey Bogart, Alec Baldwin (as well as the other three "Baldwin brothers"), Maude Adams, and Lillian Russell; both wives of Theodore Roosevelt; signer of the United States Constitution Nathaniel Gorham; Mormon apostle Parley P. Pratt; Florida governor Jeb Bush; and Robert E. Lee (Confederate General). Actress Victoria Rowell is the thirteenth descendant of Howland.

The genealogical society, The Pilgrim John Howland Society, was established in 1897 and is open for membership to all who can claim Howland as an ancestor. It is based in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The Bush, Smith, Longfellow, and Roosevelt families are double cousins through another shared ancestor, Rev. John Lathrop who arrived in the colony some sixteen years after the original Mayflower group.^[1].^[2]^[3]