John Howland: Robison and Blythe Genealogy

John Howland

John Howland was one of the Pilgrims who travelled from England to North America on the Mayflower, signed the Mayflower Compact, and helped found Plymouth Colony.
Howland was born in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England around 1599. 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, while formally 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 safely.

The Mayflower was originally bound for the mouth of the Hudson River, in land granted in a patent from the Crown to the London Virginia Company. Storms during the crossing, including the one that blew Howland overboard, caused the Mayflower to land farther north, in what is now Massachusetts. This inspired some of the "strangers" (colonists who were not members of the congregation of religious dissenters leading the expedition) to proclaim that since the settlement would not be made in the agreed-upon Virginia territory, they "would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them...." To prevent this, many of the other colonists decided to establish a government. and memorialized the event with the drafting of the Mayflower Compact, of which Howland was the 13th signer.

In 1623/24, Howland married Elizabeth Tilley, by then a young lady of seventeen, (ten years Howland's junior) 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 Henry 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. The amount totaled £1,800 to relinquish their claims on the land, and the group also assumed the colony's debts of £2,400 more. In return the group, known as undertakers had a monopoly on the colony's trade for six years.

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" on Burial Hill. 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."

Source - Wikipedia

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