Elizabeth Tilley

BAPTISM: 30 August 1607 at Henlow, co. Bedford, England, daughter of John and Joan (Hurst) (Rogers) Tilley.
MARRIAGE: John Howland, about 1625, at Plymouth.
CHILDREN: Desire, John, Hope, Elizabeth, Lydia, Hannah, Joseph, Jabez, Ruth, and Isaac.
DEATH: 21 December 1687 at Swansea.
mtDNA HAPLOGROUP:  H1a1

Elizabeth Tilley came on the Mayflower, at the age of about thirteen, with her parents John and Joan (Hurst) Tilley.  Her parents, and her aunt and uncle Edward and Agnes Tilley, all died the first winter, leaving her orphaned in the New World.  She soon married, about 1624 or 1625, to fellow Mayflower passenger John Howland, who had come as a manservant, or apprentice, to Governor John Carver who died in April 1621.

John and Elizabeth Howland raised a large family with ten children, all of whom lived to adulthood and married.  As a result, they likely have more descendants living today than any other Mayflower passengers.  Some of their descendants include Franklin D. Roosevelt; both President Bush's; actors Alec and Stephen Baldwin, Humphrey Bogart, Christopher Lloyd; Mormon church founder Joseph Smith; poet Ralph Waldo Emerson; and Doctor Benjamin Spock.