Mayflower Lives by Martyn Whittock

Author:Martyn Whittock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2019-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Later life, at Duxbury and Kingston

In Plymouth the Howlands lived on the north side of Leyden Street, on the four-acre spot granted to the family by the Division of Land in 1623. There the Howland family lived on a plot next to one occupied by Hobbomock, who acted as guide for the colony following the death of Squanto.19 It must have all seemed a very long way from Leiden in the Netherlands. Then the family lived for a short time in Duxbury, where they farmed eighty acres. While located there, John was one of the Duxbury citizens on a committee that met in March 1636 to decide where to locate the new Duxbury church. Then finally, in 1639 or 1640, they moved to Kingston, where they had a farm on a piece of land still known as Rocky Nook. Here the family took ownership of a farmhouse, with its barn and outbuildings; they farmed the uplands there, along with five acres of meadowland, from which they could cut hay for feeding livestock over the New England winters.20 Four of their youngest children—Ruth, Jabez, Joseph, and Isaac—were born at Rocky Nook.

For John Howland it was a move that brought him full circle with the first nervous exploration of the land around Plymouth Bay way back in the cold, early winter of 1620. For it was then that the third exploratory party from the Mayflower (including John) had ventured “three English miles” up a creek that could take a fair-sized boat at high tide but drained so low at low tide that even the shallop struggled to navigate it. At that time its distance from the planned fishing grounds, and the close bordering woodland that could provide cover for native attacks, had caused them to give up the place in favor of the site that would become Plymouth. But they did not forget the place and promised that when they had finally paid off their debts to the Merchant Adventurers, some would return and settle there.21 It is rather fitting that of those who did finally establish the village of Kingston, one would be John Howland, who had taken part in the original exploration of the area around the creek and also taken on the debt owed to the London speculators.

The site is now owned by the Pilgrim John Howland Society, and archaeologists have carried out a number of excavations there.22 Among the artifacts discovered is a spoon tentatively dated to between 1680 and 1710.23 It is a simple connection to the world of John and Elizabeth Howland. Within the landscape at the site it is still possible today to trace the course of a surviving stone wall that marked the boundary of the land farmed from the Howland homestead back in 1639. The original farm was burned down in 1675, during the savage conflict known as King Philip’s War.24 By that point in time, John Howland had died, and it was then that Elizabeth Howland moved in with their son, Jabez. Today, the Jabez Howland house can still be found in Plymouth.

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