John Howland

John Howland (February 23, 1673) was an English indentured servant who accompanied the English Separatists and other passengers when they left England on the to settle in Plymouth Colony. In later years, he was an executive assistant and personal secretary to Governor John Carver. In 1620 he signed the Mayflower Compact and helped found the colony. During his service to Governor Carver in 1621, Howland assisted in the making of a treaty with the Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag. In 1626, he was a freeman and one of eight settlers who agreed to assume the colony's debt to its investors in exchange for a monopoly on the fur trade. He was elected deputy to the Plymouth General Court in 1641 and held the position until 1655, and again in 1658. English origins John Howland was born in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England around 1592. He was the son of Margaret and Henry Howland, and the brother of Henry and Arthur Howland, who emigrated later from England to Marshfield, Massachusetts. Although Henry and Arthur Howland were Quakers, John himself held to the original faith of the Separatist Pilgrims. Speedwell and Mayflower William Bradford, who was the governor of Plymouth Colony for many years, wrote in Of Plymouth Plantation that Howland was a man-servant of John Carver. Carver was the deacon of the Separatists church while the group resided in Leiden, Netherlands. At the time the Leiden congregation left the Netherlands on the Speedwell, Carver was in England securing investments, gathering other potential passengers, and chartering the Mayflower for the journey to North America. Howland may have accompanied Carver's household from Leiden when the Speedwell left Delfshaven for Southampton, England, in July 1620. Ansel Ames, in Mayflower and Her Log, said that Howland was probably kin of Carver's and that he was more likely a steward or a secretary than a servant. The Separatists planned to travel to the New World on the Speedwell and the Mayflower. The Speedwell proved to be unseaworthy, and thus most of the passengers crowded onto the Mayflower.