Elizabeth Tilley

Elizabeth was thirteen when she sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 with her parents, John and Joan Tilley. Bradford's passenger list: "John Tillie, and his wife; and Eelizabeth, their doughter." Both her parents died the first winter, and so did her uncle and aunt, Edward and Ann Tilley (Pilgrim Hall). She married John Howland, who had been in the exploring shallop with her father. About 1651 Bradford wrote that Howland "maried the doughter of John Tillie, Elizabeth, and they are both now living, and have 10. children, now all living; and their eldest daughter hath 4. children."

King Philip's War. The war began at Swansea: on 24 June 1675 "there were Nine Englishmen murthered this day" (Increase Mather, 1676). By the family's account Elizabeth was living there with her daughter Lydia Browne and had to flee. Another account has her living with her son Jabez at Plymouth, and the Howlands' Rocky Nook farm burning "in 1675 during King Philip's War" (Wikipedia, citing Beaudry, Documentary Archaeology in the New World, p. 86). Her son Isaac led a party for Benjamin Church in August 1676 (see Isaac Howland). After the war, Swansea's £21 of the Irish charity of 1676/7 was given to "Mr Browne, John Butterworth" to distribute (Records of the Colony of New Plymouth 5:222), probably her son-in-law James Browne.

She spent her last years at Swansea. Her will, dated 17 Dec 1686, begins: "Elizabeth Howland of Swanzey in ye County of Bristoll ... being Seventy nine yeares of Age but of good & perfect memory." It charged her children to "walke in ye Feare of ye Lord, and in Love and peace towards each other," and shared out her books: to her son John, with £5, "my Booke called Mr Tindale's Workes"; to her son Isaac "my Booke called Willson on ye Romanes" (Thomas Wilson's commentary on Romans); to her son-in-law James Browne "my great bible"; and to her daughter Lidia Browne "my small Bible & my booke of mr Robbinsons Workes called Observations Divine & Morrall" (John Robinson had been the Pilgrims' pastor at Leiden). Her granddaughter Desire Cushman got four sheep, and her grandson Nathaniel Howland a lot of land with meadow at Duxbury. Her daughters were to share "my wearing clothes linnen and Woollen and all the rest of my Estate." James Browne and her son Jabez Howland were executors, and the will was proved 10 Jan 1687/8 (Pilgrim Hall transcription).

She died at Swansea on 21 Dec 1687, aged 80 (Pilgrim Hall).

Open questions

• Where she was in June 1675, at Swansea or at Plymouth: the two towns' records, and Beaudry's account of Rocky Nook, may say.