BORN: 1607/Henlow, Bedfordshire, England
DIED: 1687/Swansea, Plymouth Colony

Elizabeth Tilley traveled on the Mayflower in a family group that included her parents, John and Joan Hurst Tilley; her aunt and uncle, Edward and Agnes Cooper Tilley; and Agnes’s sixteen-year-old orphaned nephew Henry Sampson and one-year-old orphaned niece Humility Cooper. Although Edward and Agnes Tilley had lived in Leiden, it is not known whether Elizabeth and her family ever resided there.

According to William Bradford, Elizabeth’s entire family, with the exception of Henry and Humility, died “a little after they came ashore.” It is believed that Elizabeth was taken into the home of John and Katherine Carver, where she befriended Desire Minter and probably also helped cared for Humility.

By 1623, when Elizabeth was sixteen, she married the Carvers’ former servant John Howland, her senior by about eight years. They had ten children together.

Although John Howland quickly rose through the ranks in Plymouth, achieving prominent positions in the government and church, he and Elizabeth ultimately decided to move to nearby Duxbury. Priscilla Mullins Alden was a neighbor. By 1640, the Howlands had sold their Duxbury property and moved into the former Jenney farm in what is now Kingston.

John Howland died in 1673, leaving Elizabeth the sole executrix of his estate and his property at her disposal, despite the fact that he had grown sons. He clearly trusted her ability to manage family affairs, no doubt proven while he was away managing the colony’s Maine fur trading post. Elizabeth eventually moved in with her daughter Lydia Howland Browne and family in Swansea (now a part of East Providence, Rhode Island).

Elizabeth made her own will in 1686, a year before her death in 1687 at the age of eighty. In it she expressed her wish that her children “walke in ye Feare of ye Lord, and in Love and peace towards each other.” She also made gifts of several books, reflecting a level of education and literacy. Among them were “Mr [William] Tindale’s Workes,” Thomas Wilson’s Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, “great” and “small” Bibles, and Pilgrim pastor John Robinson’s “Observations Divine & Morrall.”

Elizabeth Tilley died at her daughter Lydia’s home in Swansea. Her will is recorded in the Bristol County (MA) Probate Records. She is buried in the Little Neck Cemetery in East Providence, Rhode Island.