Bennett and Howland

The ancestry of Lucy (Bennett) Ellis (1725-1804), wife of Matthias Ellis of Middleborough and mother of George Ellis, goes back to the Mayflower. In a storm on the crossing of 1620 John Howland, a servant in Governor Carver's household, was thrown into the sea; he caught hold of the topsail halyards and held on "sundrie fadomes under water" until he was hauled back aboard with a boat hook. Elizabeth Tilley, thirteen, was on board with her parents, John Tilley and Joan Hurst of Henlow, Bedfordshire. In December her father and Howland were in the shallop that met the First Encounter on Cape Cod, and both her parents died soon after they came ashore. She married Howland, who became a partner in the colony's fur trade and a deputy, and lived to be "the last man that was left of those that came over in the shipp called the May flower, that lived in Plymouth."

Their son Isaac, born at Plymouth in 1649, settled at Middleborough on land his father left him. In the summer of 1676 he served with Benjamin Church, who in one raid "sent Mr. Isaac Howland with a party on one side of the swamp" while he ran the other. Afterwards Middleborough met at his house, hired him to help build a weir for the fish at the bridge, chose him to keep the ordinary, and in 1692 sent him to the General Court. His daughter Priscilla married Peter Bennett at Bridgewater in 1700. Peter had settled at Fall Brook about 1692 and kept a grist mill on the brook. He was a selectman and captain of the town's first militia company; in 1706 the town ordered every housekeeper to "bring or send in unto Peter Bennet six blackbirds heads," and he kept the count; and about 1735 he and Francis Miller asked leave to dam the brook for a furnace, the Fall Brook Furnace, "one of the first blast furnaces."

Their son, Lt. Joseph Bennett Jr., died in January 1741/2, aged about thirty-eight, intestate and insolvent, and his widow Thankful sold his land at public vendue. His daughter Lucy was sixteen. In 1743 she married Matthias Ellis of Middleborough, a son of Capt. Joel Ellis; the town clerk entered several of their nine children's births with the day of the week, and George, the third, was born on 10 May 1747. Lucy was widowed by 1790, when Matthias's estate, too, was insolvent, and died in 1804, aged 79. Her son George married Phebe Stephens, a descendant of Richard Warren, who had been in the shallop with Howland and Tilley in 1620.

The line at a glance

John Howland (c. 1599-1672/3) = Elizabeth Tilley (1607-1687), daughter of John Tilley and Joan Hurst > Isaac Howland (1649-1723/4) = Elizabeth Vaughan (1653-1727) > Priscilla Howland (1681-1746) = Capt. Peter Bennett (1674-1749) > Lt. Joseph Bennett Jr. (c. 1704-1741/2) = Thankful [Sproat?] > Lucy Bennett (1725-1804) = Matthias Ellis (1719/20-by 1790) > George Ellis (1747- after 1808) = Phebe Stephens

The scope walks every ancestor of Lucy Bennett. Her husband's side is the Freeman and Ellis line, which stops at her; her son's wife, Phebe Stephens, heads the Warren and Bartlett line.

How sure it is

Lucy's own place is documented. The Middleborough births have "Lucia Bennet the Daughter of Joseph Bennet Junr & of Thankfull his wife was born October 2 1725" (MD 6:228) and "George Ellis the Son of Mathias Ellis and by Lucia his Wife Was Born May the 10th 1747," and her father's death record names his father: "Leiut Joseph Bennet the Son of Capt Peter Bennet Deceased January the 3rd 1741/2" (MD 15:24). That Matthias's wife Lucy was this Lucia rests on three things: the compiled marriage of 7 Apr 1743 (Brennan's Bosworth database, citing Genealogies of Mayflower Families 1:665; the entry itself, MD 30:8, has not been seen); Weston's catalogue of First Church members, "Lucia Ellis, wid. of Matthias, m. 1743, o. Bennet," whose mother is no. 273, Thankful Bennet; and the Bennett land she and Matthias sold in 1758 and 1763 with Elizabeth Morton and John Bennett the second, who fit her sister Elizabeth (b. 1731) and brother John (b. 1733/4). An earlier lead, that she was a daughter of Samuel Bennett and Jemima Tupper, is disproven by her birth record.

Above Joseph the links are compiled and probable, from the standard Mayflower accounts as Sibert's Howland pages give them, except where Elizabeth Tilley's will and Bradford speak:

• Priscilla Howland as Joseph's mother: he was born about 1704, during Peter Bennett's marriage to her (1700-1746). The marriage at Bridgewater, and Peter's own dates, are from Sibert.
• Priscilla as a daughter of Isaac Howland and Elizabeth Vaughan: Isaac's will of 1717/8, as the Howland genealogies give it, names his daughter "Priscilla Bennett"; the will has not been read.
• Elizabeth Vaughan as a daughter of George Vaughan and Elizabeth Hincksman: compiled trees, and TAG 23:24-26 as WikiTree cites it.
• Isaac as a son of Elizabeth Tilley (documented, proven): her will of 1686 leaves "son Isaac" her copy of "Willson on ye Romanes." As John Howland's son he rests on the Howland Quarterly (1937) and her marriage.
• Elizabeth as John Tilley's daughter and Howland's wife (documented, proven): Bradford's passenger list has "John Tillie, and his wife; and Eelizabeth, their doughter," and about 1651 he wrote that Howland "maried the doughter of John Tillie, Elizabeth." The Henlow baptisms and the 1596 marriage are from the compiled accounts (Wikipedia, MayflowerHistory.com).

The parents named beyond the line's pages (Dea. John Bennett and Deborah Grover, Peter's; George Vaughan and Elizabeth Hincksman, Elizabeth's; Henry and Margaret Howland of Fenstanton, John's; Robert and Elizabeth Tilley; William and Rose Hurst) come from the compiled trees alone. Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, whose Howland volume should carry the line down to Lucy, has not been checked, nor whether the General Society of Mayflower Descendants has accepted it. Thankful's maiden name, Sproat, rests on Weston's catalogue and the Bosworth database. The research is in Freeman and Ellis Lines: Research Findings (sections 13.5 and 13.8) and Freeman-Ellis Master Family Tree (part D).

Two stories are weaker than the rest (King Philip's War, 1675-1678: the family's register). The family account that Elizabeth Howland fled Swansea when the war began there in June 1675 has no record placing her at Swansea before 1686; and the Howland Quarterly makes Isaac Church's lieutenant, but Church calls him "Mr. Isaac Howland" and names his brother Jabez as lieutenant. Weston's tale of Isaac's long shot across the river in 1675 has no record of the time behind it. Mollie Pfeiffer's typescript does not have this line (Mollie Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer's typescript: a claim-by-claim review).

Open questions

• Lt. Joseph Bennett's Plymouth probate: his children, and whether Jemima (Bennett) Jackson was Lucy's sister.
• The Ellis-Bennett marriage entry of 1743 (MD 30:8).
• Thankful's maiden name (Sproat?), parents and death.
• Joseph Bennett's birth record.
• Capt. Peter Bennett's parents, and his will and probate of 1749.
• Isaac Howland's will and inventory, in the Plymouth County probate.
• Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, the Howland volume.
• Where Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland was in June 1675: Swansea or Plymouth.