John Howland

The rope, the river and Rocky Nook

During a storm on the Mayflower’s crossing in 1620, John Howland came above the gratings and was thrown into the sea by the ship’s movement. Bradford’s account describes him catching the topsail halyards trailing overboard. He held on even while pulled below the surface, until others hauled him within reach and brought him aboard with a boat hook. The survival of the man depended on a rope and the people able to reach him.

Howland had travelled as a servant of John Carver. He was born in England in the late sixteenth century and arrived without the position he later acquired in the government of Plymouth Colony, on the coast of present-day Massachusetts. He signed the Mayflower Compact and joined the December exploration party searching Cape Cod, the peninsula east of Plymouth, for a settlement site. The surviving narratives name him among the men who went out in bitter weather and encountered Indigenous resistance during their exploration.

By 1623 he was free from service and married to Elizabeth Tilley, another Mayflower passenger. Their family grew to ten children. Land and livestock records show the household taking its place in the settlement: Howland received land south of the brook, and in 1627 his family shared a cattle allotment with the Aldens and others. He also joined the eight Plymouth undertakers who accepted responsibility for colonial debts in exchange for trading benefits.

That obligation led into one of the most difficult episodes of his public life. In 1634 he commanded Plymouth’s trading post on the Kennebec River in present-day Maine. John Hocking, a trader from Piscataqua, anchored upriver in an effort to trade within the area Plymouth claimed under its patent. Howland demanded that he leave. When persuasion failed, Howland ordered men to cut the vessel’s cables and let it drift downstream.

The confrontation became lethal. Bradford reports that Hocking shot Moses Talbot, one of the men in the canoe, and that another man then shot Hocking. A separate deposition adds that Howland called on Hocking to aim at him rather than at the men carrying out his orders. These are accounts from Plymouth’s side of the dispute, but they preserve both his command responsibility and his reported attempt to divert the threatened shot. Two men died in the enforcement of a trading monopoly.

Howland’s career continued in government and agriculture. He served as a governor’s assistant and repeatedly represented Plymouth in the General Court. After a period at Duxbury, he and Elizabeth established their home at Rocky Nook, in what is now Kingston, Massachusetts, just north of Plymouth. The acquisition involved an exchange with John Jenney: a house, barn, outbuildings, upland and meadow in return for money and a portion of Duxbury land.

His will, dated May 29, 1672, shows how he intended the family’s property to support Elizabeth after his death. She was to have the use and benefit of the Rocky Nook dwelling and associated land for her lifetime, subject to specified gifts. Their son Joseph would receive that property after her death. Howland named Elizabeth sole executrix and left her the remaining estate after debts and legacies were paid. His daughters received stated monetary bequests.

He died in February 1673. The inventory of his possessions records the equipment of the household and farm: axes, augers, a hoe, pruning tools, sheep shears, sickles, cowbells, kettles and pewter dishes. The rope at sea is the most famous object in his story; these less celebrated objects belong to the long life that followed.

Their children included Desire Howland, and the account places the move to Rocky Nook around 1640. John is commemorated at Burial Hill; Pilgrim Hall Museum states that his exact grave site is unknown. Its Little Neck burial reference belongs to Elizabeth.