John Howland (c. 1591 – February 23, 1672/3) was a passenger on the Mayflower. He was an indentured servant to John Carver and accompanied the Separatists and other passengers when they left England to settle in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He signed the Mayflower Compact and helped found Plymouth Colony.
John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, to whom he was indentured, died in April 1621. In 1626, Howland was a freeman and one of eight settlers who agreed to assume the colony's debt to its investors in England in exchange for a monopoly of the fur trade. He was elected deputy to the General Court in consecutive years from 1641–1655 and again in 1658.
John Howland died February 23, 1672/3 at the age of 80, having outlived all other male Mayflower passengers except John Cooke, son of Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke. John Cooke died in 1695. He is presumed to be buried on Burial Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Tilley outlived her husband by 15 years. She died December 21, 1681, in the home of her daughter, Lydia Brown, in Swansea, Massachusetts, and is buried in a section of that town which is now in East Providence, RI.
Read more about John Howland: Early Life, The Voyage, Kennebec Trading Post, Elizabeth Tilley, Children, Death, Notable Descendants
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“Whither goest thou?”
—Bible: New Testament Peter, in John, 13:36.
The words, which are repeated in John 16:5, are best known in the Latin form in which they appear in the Vulgate: Quo vadis? Jesus replies, “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.”