Jeremiah Howes

Of Yarmouth. On 28 Apr 1672 he sat on a Yarmouth coroner’s jury on a child who came “to its end by falling into a brooke of water, and soe was drowned” (PCR 5:95). In King Philip’s War he was named to Yarmouth’s council of war in Feb 1675/6 and chosen constable of Yarmouth in June 1676; his share of the town rate of 1676 “towards the charges of the late war” was £7 14s (PCR 5; Hawes pp. 19-20, citing Swift). He was a selectman of Yarmouth and deputy to the General Court in June 1677 (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, not the record’s words). 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); the suit was nonsuited because Mocoy’s letter of attorney to Elisha Hedge “was found to be illegall” (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). 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).

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.

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). He is buried with Sarah in the old Howes burying ground at Dennis (Hawes p. 19).