The Howland House
The old records of Plymouth pay tribute at his death to John Howland. He came as a lusty youth among the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and after an arduous life spent for the Colony, was the last of that valiant company to die in Plymouth.
His grave stone repeats the record of the town, “He was a godly man and an ancient professor in the ways of Christ.”
John Howland and his wife, Elizabeth Tilley, had a large family of sons and daughters to inherit and transmit his good name, which after the passage of three hundred years, may be found in every state of that republic to whose beginnings he had given his youth and manhood.
Today the Society of Howland Descendants has preserved one of the earliest of the 17th century houses in Plymouth as a memorial to the founder of their family.
The house where Jabez Howland, son of John, the Pilgrim, lived, was built in 1667 by Jacob Mitchell. It was of one room with an attic and a great chimney at one end—a very usual type of building at that time. Successive generations have enlarged it by adding rooms on each side of the chimney, and a “lean to,” and by lifting the roof for upper rooms, the original structure still remains as part of the completed house. In these oldest rooms John Howland and his wife, no doubt, visited his son and his family, and around the great fire place, which is still existing, memorable tales must have been told of the adventures and experiences of the Pilgrims in their old English homes, their sojourn in Holland, and the early days of the Plymouth settlement. With this historical background the gradual evolution of such a house to meet the changing circumstances and conditions of two centuries is an interesting study of American life.
The Society of Howland Descendants, holds its annual reunions in the old house, and have furnished and filled the rooms with antiquarian collections given by its members, or preserved in groups as individual memorials.
The house with its associations is interesting to visitors, and to the Howland family a lesson of veneration from the Past to future generations.
