♀Hannah Howland

Hannah Howland (1637–1708) was a daughter of the Mayflower passengers John Howland (1593–1673) and Elizabeth Tilley (1607–1687) and the wife of Jonathan Bosworth. She was the eighth great-grand-aunt of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the sister of Desire Howland (1625–1683), Roger’s eighth great-grandmother.

Early life

She was the sixth of the ten children of John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, born about 1637 in the reckoning of Elizabeth Pearson White’s volume on the family. Her father’s will of 29 May 1672, proved on 5 March 1672/73, left twenty shillings to each of six married daughters, among them “Hannah Bosworth”.

Marriage and children

Susan Roser’s Mayflower Increasings gives her marriage to Jonathan Bosworth on 6 July 1661, probably at Swansea. A family history compiled by Mardenna Hunter lists nine children born to the couple at Swansea between 1662 and 1680. Hunter’s compilation places two of them there in July 1676, the year after King Philip’s War^W began in that town: Elizabeth, who died there on 31 July 1676, and the elder Jonathan, who was buried there on 16 July 1676.

Her mother’s will

Elizabeth Howland, who spent her last years at Swansea in the house of her daughter Lydia, made her will on 17 December 1686 and left Hannah a pair of sheets and pillowbeers. The rest of her money, debts and linen went to “my three daughters, Elizabeth Dickinson, Lidia Browne and Hannah Bosworth, to be equally divided amongst them.” Her other three daughters, Desire Gorham, Hope Chipman and Ruth Cushman, had already died.

Death

White’s family table gives Hannah’s death as 1708, and Hunter places it at Swansea.