Gobble Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone, and Happy Birthday to Mom!

I have known for years that my family was descended (in a couple of lines!) from Mayflower passenger Degory Priest. But, I only recently discovered a descent from another (more famous) passenger: John Howland. Following are some notes I've been collecting on him. Thought they would be appropriate.

From Saints and Strangers by George Findlay Willison, Reynal & Hitchcock, Publishers, New York, 1945:

John Howland came to America aboard the famous Mayflower as a servant in the household of Governor John Carver. He was described by his contemporaries as a "lustie young man." (Page 134.) During the voyage, the ship encountered a fierce storm. John grew restless in the stuffy hold, so went up on deck and was immediately swept overboard. Fortunately, the ship was trailing some of the topsail halyards and he was able to get a hold of these until he could be pulled out of the water with a hook. (Page 136.)

Upon arriving along the coast of Massachusetts, John Howland was one of eighteen volunteers who left the Mayflower to explore the mainland. They disembarked at Wellfleet Bay, camping on the beach that first night. In the morning, they roamed the nearby woods and discovered a large native burial ground. (Page 153.) And, that night they constructed a barricade at Eastham, where they spent their second restless night on American soil. The next day, their breakfast was interrupted by an Indian attack, which was repelled under the leadership of Capt. Miles Standish. (Page 154.)

Howland and his comrades persued the retreating Indians for a quarter mile before returning to their campsite. Remarkably, none were injured in the skirmish, although they found their coats hanging on the barricade shot through and through with arrows. They broke camp, and set to sea in search of Plymouth Harbor. But, a blustery winter gale soon descended upon them, breaking their rudder and snapping their mast in three pieces. They barely managed to keep their small vessel from capsizing before a flood tide swept them into an unfamiliar harbor. Rather than going ashore, they chose to spend the night in their storm-tossed boat. (Page 155.)

In the morning, Howland and his companions discovered they had landed on an island in Plymouth harbor. They spent the day resting and recovering from their exhaustion, then spent the next day keeping Sabbath. Finally, on Monday morning, December 11th, they crossed the harbor to land at Plymouth. There they found cornfields and running water, and decided it was the best place they were likely to find for settlement. And, by the following day, they had made it back to the "Mayflower" to report their findings to the rest of the passengers. (Page 156.)

In Plymouth, John Howland was granted a plot of land on a slope along the Highway to the beach, on the edge of Cole's Hill and overlooking the famous Plymouth Rock. (Page 162.) After his master John Carver died of sunstroke while toiling in the colony's cornfields in 1621, his estate was given to Howland. (Pages 439 and 443.) And, in 1632, he received a large tract along the Jones River in what is now Kingston--some five miles away from Plymouth. This encouraged him, like so many other fellow colonists, to move away from the original settlement. (Page 313.)

John Howland is best remembered for operating the colonial trading post on the Kennebec River at the site of modern Augusta, Maine, where he carried on a brisk exchange with the Abnaki Indians. (Page 263.) The trade was briefly interrupted in 1634, when a Dutch ship lay anchor and threatened the English outpost. But, John Howland sent two men in a canoe to cut the ship's anchor cables. (Page 297.) Unfortunately, a melee ensued and the Dutch ship's captain was shot dead. Many of the pilgrims back in Plymouth feared the King of England would use the incident as a pretext for sending over a royal governor to rule over them. (Page 298.)

Howland is also remembered for presiding as magistrate at the witchcraft trial of Mrs. William Holmes of Scituate after Dinah Sylvester accused her of appearing to her in the shape of a bear. He found Sylvester's testimony to be nonsense, fined her five pounds, and sentenced her to a public whipping. (Page 320.)

Following notes were taken from The Time of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony by James and Patricia Scott Deetz, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, 2000:

In 1937, architect Sidney Strickland undertook excavation of John Howland's home site. Howland had purchased the old home of John Jenney on 2 February 1638, and there was still an obvious depression in the soil and a quantity of protruding rocks that indicated its location. Unfortunately, Strickland was not a provessional archaeologist, and his sketches of the site were amateurish. He published only a short account of his work in 1939, but the artifacts he recovered were never cataloged and instead wound up on the porch of a summer home in Plymouth--stored on paper plates! By the 1970s, other assorted pieces of ceramic from different eras had been mixed up with the originals, making it nearly impossible to ascertain whether or not they actually came from the Howland household. (Pages 217-218.)

The Howland property straddles the modern Howland's Lane in the Rocky Nook section of Kingston, Massachusetts. Recently, the University of Virginia re-investigated the supposed foundations of the Howland home, which was occupied by descendants until 1735. The Virginians determined that Howland had lived in the old Jenney home only until he completed a more elaborate structure on the property. This second house survived until at least the time of King Philip's War in 1676, when his son claimed the Indians burned it to the ground. (Pages 240-243.)