♂Isaac Howland

Isaac Howland (1649–1723) was the youngest of the ten children of the Mayflower passengers John Howland (1593–1673) and Elizabeth Tilley (1607–1687), and the son to whom his father left the family’s lands at Middleborough, Massachusetts, where he lived and died. He was the eighth great-grand-uncle of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), the brother of Desire Howland (1625–1683), Roger’s eighth great-grandmother.

Middleborough

Susan Roser’s Mayflower Increasings gives his birth as 15 November 1649 at Rocky Nook, then part of Plymouth, and notes that Elizabeth Pearson White’s volume on the family gives no source for the day. His father’s will of 29 May 1672, proved on 5 March 1672/73, gave “his youngest son, Isaac Howland”, in White’s wording, all of his uplands and meadows at Middleborough and in the Major’s Purchase near the Namassakett Ponds, which John Howland had bought from William White of Marshfield, together with half of a twelve-acre meadow at the Winnatucsett River in Plymouth. The will itself writes the town as “Middlebery”.

Family

About 1676 Isaac married Elizabeth Vaughn, a daughter of George Vaughn; Roser gives her birth at Marshfield on 8 April 1653 and places the marriage probably at Middleborough. Compiled genealogies name at least eight children, the first of them Seth, born at Middleborough on 28 November 1677. Two Mayflower genealogies report that Isaac made his will on 6 February 1717/18, naming his wife Elizabeth and his daughters Jael Southworth and Hannah Tinkham.

His mother’s will of 17 December 1686 left him a book, “Willson on ye Romanes”, a pair of sheets and pillowbeers, and her great brass kettle, “already in his possession.”

Death

Roser gives his death at Middleborough on 9 March 1723/4 and his burial in The Green cemetery there. Roser gives his son Isaac’s death as 26 February 1723/4, less than a fortnight before him. A deed of 11 May 1724, by which their daughters sold land, excepted “what was given to our mother Elizabeth Howland”, so his widow was alive after him; Roser gives her death as 29 October 1727.

Notes

The tree enters Isaac’s death as 1723, the first year of the double date 1723/4. Hunter’s compilation puts Elizabeth Vaughn’s death in 1717, which the 1724 deed contradicts.