Person:Henry Howland (15)

Henry Howland was a yeoman who spent his entire life in or near the town of Fen Stanton. Since he was born there, his parents must have moved from the village of Newport Pond in the adjoining county of Essex shortly after their marriage in 1560.

Henry was married twice, first to a woman named Ann who lived in the same area and then to Margaret Aires from Essex. Each marriage produced five children. Three of the five offspring of his first marriage would go to the new world and become part of the Plymouth Plantation of Cape Cod Bay. A son by his second wife also joined them. Some references say that all sailed on the Mayflower but, although they apparently were early arrivals there, only one can be confirmed by the records of that colony as being among the passengers.

The one who actually did make that historic 1620 voyage was Henry Howland's son John. His is a most interesting story as are the events of that memorable chapter in early American history. (See John Howland's notes.)

When Franklyn Howland published his 'Howland Genealogy' in 1885 it was known that a Humphrey Howland of London, draper, left a will in 1646 which mentioned his three brothers, Arthur, John, and Henry of New England. Further research did not identify their parents until 1937 when McClure Meredith Howland of New York discovered in the Draper's Records of London, mention that Humphrey Howland was the son of Henry Howland of Fen Stanton, Huntingdonshire, England. Thus we know that John Howland's father was Henry Howland.

1. ↑ Fenstanton Parish Register.
2.   A. Donovan Faust (Foust). A Family History: The Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust. (1997).
3.   Faust, Don. A Family History; the Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust
   1997.
4.   Roberts, Gary Boyd. Ancestors of American Presidents. (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009)
   pp. 446-47.

   Ancestor of five American presidents: through Mayflower passenger son John, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush; and, through son Henry, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.