♀Desire Howland

Desire Howland (1625 – 1683) was a daughter of the Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, and the wife of John Gorham; her father’s will of 1672 names her as “Desire Gorham”. A published study of the family states that she was named for Desire Minter, a girl who had crossed on the Mayflower in the same household. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Desire Gorham (1644–1700); the court settlement of her estate in March 1683/84 names a daughter Desire among her eleven children, and the inventory of her goods records silver lent to John Hawes, the husband of that daughter.

Early life

Her parents had both come to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620: John Howland as a member of Governor John Carver’s household, and Elizabeth Tilley as the daughter of John and Joan Tilley, who died in the first winter. They married at Plymouth on or about 25 March 1623, the first day of the year in the reckoning then used. Elizabeth Pearson White’s volume on John Howland in the Mayflower Families series gives Desire’s birth as probably 1625, making her the eldest of their ten children, followed by John, Hope, Elizabeth, Lydia, Hannah, Joseph, Jabez, Ruth and Isaac.

White also explains her name. Desire Minter, then a girl of about fifteen, had sailed in the Carver household; after the Carvers died in 1621 she lived with John Howland, who had become head of what was left of that household. She later went back to England, where, in Governor William Bradford’s words, she “proved not very well and dyed”. White writes that the Howlands were very fond of her and named their first child in her honor.

When Plymouth divided its cattle among its settlers on 1 June 1627, Desire was listed in her parents’ household, with her infant brother John. The division, recorded in Bradford’s records, counted every member of each family, and by then only forty-two of the ninety-nine people who had reached Plymouth in the Mayflower were still living there.

Marriage and Cape Cod

Desire married John Gorham (born 1621), later known as Captain John Gorham. In 1639 the first settlers were offered additional plantations for themselves and their heirs, and part of the land John Howland chose lay at Yarmouth, on Cape Cod. White records that Desire and her sister Hope, the wife of John Chipman, settled there, while their brother John was given land nearby at Barnstable.

John Howland made his will on 29 May 1672 and it was proved on 5 March 1672/73. He left twenty shillings to each of his married daughters, “Desire Gorham, Hope Chipman, Elizabeth Dickinson, Lydia Browne, Hannah Bosworth and Ruth Cushman”, and the rest of his estate to his “loveing wife Elizabeth”. The will shows that Desire was then living.

In March 1683/84 the Plymouth Colony court settled her estate among her children, with the consent of her sons James, John and Joseph Gorham and her sons-in-law. The order names eleven children: James, John, Joseph, Jabez and Shubael, and Desire, Temperance, Elizabeth, Mercy, Lydia and Hannah. James, the eldest son, received a double portion; the others had equal shares, and Elizabeth, already dead, had hers go to her children. Shubael was called the youngest son, and the order notes that fifty pounds had been given to his mother for his schooling, and he was to have forty pounds in silver, with five pounds of his share, when he came of age. John Howland’s will does not name his Gorham grandchildren.

Death

The Barnstable town record, copied in 1736 from a volume since lost, says that “Mre Desire Gorham Relict of Cap John Gorham Senr Late of Barnstable” died on 13 October 1683. Her inventory, however, is dated 3 August 1683, more than two months earlier, and one of the two dates must be wrong. George Ernest Bowman, who printed both, noted that the probate copy was made from the original inventory, while the town entry is the later copy. The court order calls her “of Yarmouth”. The inventory, taken by John Thacher and John Miller and presented to the court on 6 March 1683/84 on the oaths of her sons James and John, lists oxen and cows, two silver spoons, a dram cup and a silver beaker, an old Bible and a book by Tillinghast, and a third share in a mill with its lands and tools. Among the debts owed her was silver lent to John Hawes and to Joseph Whilden.

When her mother made her own will at Swansea on 17 December 1686, three of her daughters, Desire Gorham, Hope Chipman and Ruth Cushman, had already died, leaving heirs.

Notes

A family chart compiled in 1994 gives Desire’s birth as 22 May 1627 and her burial at Barnstable on 13 October 1683. The birth date cannot stand: her brother John was born in April 1627, and White puts Desire’s birth in 1625. The burial date matches the death date in the Barnstable town record, but no burial record has been seen.