Jeremiah Howes

Jeremiah Howes lived his life at Yarmouth. On 28 Apr 1672 he sat on a coroner's jury there on a child who came "to its end by falling into a brooke of water, and soe was drowned" (PCR 5:95).

King Philip's War. When the colony's council of war named a council for each town on 29 Feb 1675/6, with power over "watches and wardings and garrisons," Yarmouth's was "Mr Edmond Hawes, John Miller, Jeremiah Howes" (Records of the Colony of New Plymouth 5:186); the same order put his brother-in-law Capt. John Freeman, who had married another of the governor's daughters, Mercy, on Eastham's. His brother Capt. Thomas Howes led Yarmouth's men in the third and fifth expeditions. In the town's rate "towards the charge of the late war," made on 29 Apr 1676 by Edmund Hawes, Samuel Rider and James Matthews, he was charged "Jerh. Howes, 7.14" (Freeman, History of Cape Cod 2:195, quoting the town record; Hawes pp. 19-20, citing Swift); the same rate charges "Mrs. Prence," probably his mother, and "Mr. Mayo," probably Rev. John Mayo. On 10 June 1676 Gov. Prence's heirs, among them "Jeremiah Howes and his wife Sarah" and "the widow Mary Prence," sold land of his estate (Hawes p. 20, citing the Supplement to Pope's Pioneers), and that month Jeremiah was chosen constable of Yarmouth (PCR 5).

In June 1677 he was a selectman of Yarmouth and its deputy to the General Court (PCR 5:230-232). In 1680/1 he, his brother Joseph and Samuel Howes, probably a nephew, were to "secure for it all such whales as should be cast up between Sawsuit Harbor mouth and Yarmouth Harbor for £4 a whale" (Hawes's paraphrase of the Yarmouth agreement). On 8 May 1684 his nephew Jonathan, youngest son of Capt. Thomas Howes, "made choise of his vnkell, Mr Jeremiah Howes, to be his gaurdian" (PCR 6:134). John Mocoy sued him for "takeing vp the horse of the said complainant without his leaue or order, and for detaineing the said horse" (PCR 7:153), and lost: his letter of attorney to Elisha Hedge "was found to be illegall," and the suit was nonsuited (Hawes p. 20).

Gov. Prence and others had bought land on the north side of the Titicut River near Bridgewater; when it was bounded on 24 Dec 1686 and divided into ten lots, Jeremiah had the tenth. In 1702 he bought land in South Harwich of "John Skinnaquit, an Indian" (Hawes p. 20).

His wife Sarah's last stepmother was his own mother, the widow Mary Howes, who married Gov. Prence. Swift (Old Yarmouth p. 117) says Prence's widow Mary died in 1695 "at the house of her son-in-law Jeremiah Howes." Hawes adds: "He was also her own son" (Hawes p. 1).

His will (14 Aug 1708, Barnstable Probate 3:174) leaves £120 of movables to "my Eight Daughters Elizabeth Bacon Sarah Mayo Mary Howes Bethiah Howes Marcey Sturges Susanah Bassett Thankfull Miller and Rebekah Howes," and his land and meadow in Bridgewater and Middleborough to all his children. He is buried with Sarah in the old Howes burying ground at Dennis (Hawes p. 19).