Isaac Howland

A son of the Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, Isaac was born at Plymouth in 1649. He settled at Middleborough on land his father left him and was "very prominent in the early settlement of Middleborough" (Howland Quarterly, July 1937): surveyor of highways in 1672, and sworn constable of Middleborough on 3 June 1674 (PCR 5:145).

A Middleborough story, printed by Weston in 1906, tells that in June 1675 an Indian taunted the garrison from a rock across the river, and the council chose Isaac Howland "for his skill as a marksman." Resting Lt. John Tomson's long gun on a comrade's shoulder, he hit the man at a distance Weston gives as 155 rods, nearly half a mile.

With Church, 1676. In the summer of 1676 he served with Benjamin Church. From late July Church's company served on the terms "that the country should find them ammunition and provision, and half the prisoners and arms they took. The Captain and his English soldiers to have the other half of the prisoners and arms, and the Indian soldiers the loose plunder" (Entertaining Passages, 1825 ed. p. 74). In early August they came on Philip's people, who "left their kettles boiling, and meat roasting upon their wooden spits; and ran into a swamp." Church, "pursuing, sent Mr. Isaac Howland with a party on one side of the swamp, while himself with the rest, ran on the other side," and "Captain Church and Mr. Howland soon met at the further end of the swamp." Many of the enemy there "stood still and let the English come and take the guns out of their hands, when they were both charged and cocked," and the prisoners were "both men, women and children" (pp. 90-92). His party probably had its share of them, to be sold or bound into service. That summer Plymouth allowed its magistrates to place the children of surrendered Indians with English households "vntill such children shall attaine the age of twenty foure or twenty fiue yeers" (Records of the Colony of New Plymouth 5:207). Church's lieutenant in those raids was Isaac's brother: "Mr. Jabez Howland, who was now, and often, his Lieutenant."

In March 1676/7 Middleborough's share of the Irish charity for those impoverished by the war, £4 10s, was to be distributed by "Francis Combe, Isacke Howard" (PCR 5:222): very probably Isaac Howland, the town's leading man. Jabez had been on Plymouth's committee to clothe the town's soldiers in January 1675/6, and a "John Howland," perhaps their brother John of Barnstable, sat with Joseph Bartlett and Mark Snow on the jury of March 1676/7 that tried three Native men for the killings at Taunton in 1675 (PCR 5:224).

Middleborough held town meetings at his house in the early 1680s, and he sat on the grand inquest in 1682 (Howland Quarterly). In July 1683 the town hired him, John Allyn and David Wood "to build a substantial Ware for the taking of their fish" at the bridge, at 2s 6d a day each, and on 30 Aug 1686 it "made choyce & approved of Isaac Howland to keep ye ordinary" (town records, printed in Weston pp. 554-558). In 1686 he sued Thomas Joslen of Little Compton for £7 owed for "a yoak of oxen," and Joslen acknowledged the debt. He was deputy in 1689-91 (Howland Quarterly), and in 1690 he brought in Middleborough's 10 shillings toward fitting out "the souldiers for Albany" (PCR 6). In 1692 Middleborough sent him as its representative to the Massachusetts General Court (Weston).

His mother's will (1686) left him "my Booke called Willson on ye Romanes," Thomas Wilson's commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans. His own will (1717/8) names his wife Elizabeth, his sons Seth, Isaac and Nathan, and his daughters Priscilla Bennett, Jael Southworth, Susannah Wood and Hannah Tinkham. He died at Middleborough on 9 Mar 1723/4, aged 74, and is buried in the Cemetery at the Green. The will was proved on 1 June 1724, and the inventory is dated 17 Sept 1724 (the Howland genealogies, via Sibert).

Open questions

• His will and inventory, in the Plymouth County probate records.
• "Isacke Howard" of the Irish charity (PCR 5:222): the manuscript, to read it as Howland.