John Howland

John Howland was born in England in the late sixteenth century. He sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 as a servant of John Carver. Washed overboard during the voyage, he caught a trailing rope and was brought back aboard with a boat hook.[3]

By 1623 he was a free man and married to Elizabeth Tilley Howland. They had ten children, including Desire Howland.[1,3]

Howland helped assume the colony’s debts, served as a governor’s assistant and managed its fur-trading post on the Kennebec River in what is now Maine. He later represented Plymouth in the colony’s legislature. The family lived at Duxbury before establishing a farm at Rocky Nook, in present-day Kingston, Massachusetts, around 1640.[3]

He died in February 1673.[3]