: A guide to Plymouth and its history by Briggs Helen T Briggs Rose T Dreher Raymond C Illustrator - Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony); Plymouth (Mass.) Guidebooks; Plymouth (Mass.) History

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us life spent for the Colony, was the last of that valiant company to die in Plymouth.

His grave stone repeats the record of the town, "He was a godly man and an ancient professor in the ways of Christ."

John Howland and his wife, Elizabeth Tilley, had a large family of sons and daughters to inherit and transmit his good name, which after the passage of three hundred years, may be found in every state of that republic to whose beginnings he had given his youth and manhood.

Today the Society of Howland Descendants has preserved one of the earliest of the 17th century houses in Plymouth as a memorial to the founder of their family.

The house where Jabez Howland, son of John, the Pilgrim, lived, was built in 1667 by Jacob Mitchell. It was of one room with an attic and a great chimney at one end--a very usual type of building at that time. Successive generations have enlarged it by adding rooms on each side of the chimney, and a "lean to," and by lifting the roof for upper rooms, the original structure still remains as part of the completed house. In these oldest rooms John Howland and his wife, no doubt, visited his son and his family, and around the great fire place, which is still existing, memorable tales must have been told of the adventures and experiences of the Pilgrims in their old English homes, their sojourn in Holland, and the early days of the Plymouth settlement. With this historical background the gradual evolution of such a house to meet the changing circumstances and conditions of two centuries is an interesting study of American life.

The Society of Howland Descendants, holds its annual reunions in the old house, and have furnished and filled the rooms with antiquarian collections given by its members, or preserved in groups as individual memorials.

The house with its associations is interesting to visitors, and to the Howland family a lesson of veneration from the Past to future generations.

The Sparrow House

When the Plymouth Colony Trust undertook the rehabilitation of a number of old houses on Summer St., many of them were found to contain architectural features of unusual interest. Notable among them, is the Richard Sparrow house. This house is an excellent example of 17th century building, and clearly shows how it was enlarged, a few years after it was built, from the "one-room" to the "lean-to" or "salt-box" type. Its great fireplace, with rounded inner corners and 17th century oven, is remarkable. If, as is believed, the house was built by Richard Sparrow in 1640, it is probably the oldest house now standing in Plymouth. It was therefore decided to restore it to its original appearance, and open it to the public.

The Sparrow House is now the headquarters of the Plymouth Potters, a group of local craftsmen doing very attractive and original work with local clay. They maintain a workshop and showroom at the Sparrow House. An old water wheel turns in the brook at the foot of the garden and the firing kiln on the shady bank presents much of interest to craftsmen and artists.

Authorities

The history of the Plymouth Colony may be read in considerable detail in the words of its founders.

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