The Mayflower Line: Howland to Robert

Status: this is the resolved, corrected version of the Angell/Mayflower question, and it supersedes anything said about it elsewhere on this site. The correction was cross-checked against outside published sources before being accepted — see the verification notes below. It's also now been applied directly to the live tree at https://tree.ancestry.maiale.com (William Angell's parent family, September 2026), not just documented here.

The correction

The raw GEDCOM used to attach direct ancestor William Angel (b. 1710, Providence – d. 1742, Colchester, CT) to the WRONG parents: "James Angell b. 1684, Loquiessett" + "Susannah Wilkinson." 🔴 This pairing is confirmed incorrect and is no longer used.

The correct parents, per the actual Mayflower Society Silver Book (Mayflower Families in Progress, Vol. 23 Pt. 2, "The Family of John Howland") are:

🟢 James Angell (1682–1742) + Mary Brown (1680–1749)

Their Mayflower story

John Howland: the man who fell overboard

🟢 The best-attested incident from the entire 1620 crossing. Mid-Atlantic, the Mayflower ran into heavy weather and had to "lie a-hull" for days — sails furled, riding out the storm rather than fighting it. William Bradford, Plymouth's governor and the colony's own historian, records the moment in Of Plymouth Plantation: a young manservant in Governor John Carver's household, John Howland, came up on deck against orders and was pitched into the sea by a violent lurch of the ship. He caught hold of the topsail halyards, which were trailing overboard, and held on — dragged under, by several fathoms — until the crew hauled him back aboard with a boat hook. Bradford calls him "a lusty young man" and notes he survived, "though he was something ill with it," going on to become "a profitable member both in church and commonwealth." Every one of John Howland's descendants on this tree — Lydia Howland, on down through the Brown/Angell/ Barnes/Bartle line to Robert — exists because that grab in the dark held.

Elizabeth Tilley: orphaned twice in one year

🟢 Elizabeth was about 13 when she sailed with her parents, John Tilley and Joan (Hurst) Tilley, plus her uncle Edward Tilley, his wife Agnes (Cooper) Tilley, and two more children the elder Tilleys had taken in: 16-year-old Henry Samson (Agnes's nephew) and a younger girl, Humility Cooper (Agnes's niece) — seven people traveling as one household. Plymouth's first winter (1620–21) — "the General Sickness," a mix of scurvy, pneumonia, and exposure that killed roughly half the colony — took all four adults: John and Joan Tilley, and Edward and Agnes Tilley, leaving Elizabeth, Henry, and Humility all orphaned within the same few months.

Elizabeth was then taken in by Governor John Carver and his wife Katherine — the colony's own recently-arrived leaders. It didn't last long. Carver died in April 1621 after collapsing with a violent headache while working in the fields on an unusually hot day (Bradford's account; almost certainly a stroke or heat stroke) — Plymouth's first governor, dead within a year of signing the Mayflower Compact. Katherine, whom Bradford describes as "weak" with grief, died five or six weeks later. Elizabeth — not yet 14 — had lost two households within a single year. 🟡 Some later historians suggest she then became an informal ward of Carver's former manservant, John Howland, though this is speculative; no wardship records survive for any of the orphaned Mayflower children.

Henry Samson survived to adulthood and has his own substantial line of documented descendants. Humility Cooper, still a small child, was eventually sent back to relatives in England rather than staying on in Plymouth. 🟢

Marriage, and a life that didn't end in tragedy

🟢 John and Elizabeth married in Plymouth in 1624. Unlike many Mayflower unions, theirs was long and, by the standard of the era, fortunate: ten children, all of whom survived to adulthood — including Lydia Howland, this family's own link down the chain to Robert. John became one of Plymouth Colony's more substantial citizens — an Assistant to the governor, a deputy to the General Court, and from 1634 the agent running the colony's Kennebec (Maine) fur-trading post, genuinely dangerous frontier work, not a ceremonial post. He died 23/24 February 1673 (Old Style 1672/3) at Rocky Nook, Plymouth, and Plymouth Colony records describe him as "interred with honour" on Burial Hill — a distinction, including a military volley fired over the grave, reserved for the colony's leaders. Elizabeth outlived him by fourteen years, dying December 21, 1687 — the last surviving woman who had crossed on the Mayflower.

The house still standing

🟢 Their son Jabez Howland's house in Plymouth (built c. 1667), where John and Elizabeth are documented to have spent their final years, is the only structure still standing in Plymouth that Mayflower passengers are known to have lived in. It's a museum today, run by the Pilgrim John Howland Society.

Some of the cousins along the way

🟢 John and Elizabeth had ten children and, per the Pilgrim John Howland Society — the descendant organization that verifies Howland lineage claims for membership — something like two million living Americans can trace descent from them today. These are cousins through a shared ancestor, not people on Robert's own direct line above: none of them descend specifically through Lydia Howland, and no exact cousin-degree has been worked out here. A few of the more recognizable names the Society documents:

• Three U.S. Presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush (plus Jeb Bush, and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson)
• Poets and writers: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
• Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Alec Baldwin, Christopher Lloyd, John Lithgow, Chevy Chase
• Others: Sarah Palin; Dr. Benjamin Spock; Joseph Smith Jr., founder of the LDS Church; and Esther Howland, credited as the first mass-producer of Valentine's Day cards in America

Full list: Pilgrim John Howland Society, Notable Descendants.

The rest of the cast

Lydia Howland married into a family with its own long Plymouth Colony record — and two generations later, that family married into a Connecticut military dynasty that helped end King Philip's War.

John Browne, "Gentleman," of Wannamoiset (c.1583–1662)

🟢 James Brown Sr.'s father, and the one who actually held Plymouth Colony office — an unusually long run of it. Freeman from 1634, he served as an Assistant to the Governor of Plymouth Colony almost continuously from 1635 to 1655, was a commissioner for the United Colonies of New England (1644–1656), a magistrate and Judge of Probate for Taunton (1655), and sat on the colony's Council of War during three of its tensest years (1642, 1646, 1653). He lived first in Plymouth, then Taunton, then Rehoboth, before settling at Wannamoisett — the neck of land that's now East Providence/Barrington, RI — where he's buried at Little Neck Cemetery, the same small burying ground where his son and grandson (both also named James) would later be laid to rest. A full genealogy was published about him in 1908: John Browne, Gentleman, of Plymouth ... Assistant, Commissioner, Magistrate, Pioneer in New England Colonial Life. Not to be confused with Chad Brown's Providence Browns — the Brown University family — an entirely different immigrant line (see Debunked Myths).

Major James Browne (1623–1710) — fined for the wrong religion

🟢 John Browne's son, Lydia Howland's husband, and a militia major in his own right. James and Rev. John Myles were fined together for holding an illegal Baptist meeting in Rehoboth — Massachusetts Bay's Puritan authorities tolerated Baptist dissent about as well as they tolerated Quakers. Rather than stop, Brown and Myles relocated the whole congregation to Swansea and organized what became the first Baptist church in Massachusetts. James died at Swansea in 1710.

Lt. James Brown (1655–1718) and the Denison marriage

🟢 Their son, Lt. James Brown, married Margaret Denison in 1678 — daughter of Capt. George Denison, one of colonial Connecticut's more startling military figures. George is one of two Denison sons who independently lead to Robert; the other is Major General Daniel Denison, via the Dudley line. Full write-up: The Denison Family. Denison crossed the Atlantic as a child in 1631, was widowed in his twenties, sailed back to England and fought there as a soldier, then returned to New England and settled at Stonington. In 1676, at around 56, he led the Connecticut militia company that captured Canonchet, sachem of the Narragansetts and one of the last major Native military leaders still fighting — a capture that effectively broke the Narragansett resistance and helped end King Philip's War. Canonchet was executed at Stonington shortly after his capture. It's Lt. James Brown's own 1717 will — not a title, not a legend — that supplies the actual documentary link tying this whole chain together: it names his daughter "Mary Angell," which is what proves the Angell line runs back through Howland at all.

How this was verified

• Confirmed via a WikiTree genealogist working-group discussion (profile Angell-1388) that explicitly debated this exact question and resolved it by citing the Mayflower Society Silver Book, concluding in these words: "William Angell, (b. 1710-d. after 1758) was the son of James Angell 1682-1742 and Mary Brown 1680-1749" — and explicitly noting this overturns Avery F. Angell's 1872 book — Avery mixed up two different men named James Angell, and this pairing is the wrong one.
• Confirmed via multiple independent sources (WikiTree, Geni, MayflowerDNA.org, each citing Lt. James Brown's actual 1717 will text and the 1963 Denison Genealogy) that Lt. James Brown's will names his daughter "Mary Angell" directly, and that Mary Brown (b. 1680) married James Angell.
• Confirmed Mary Brown's ancestry: Lt. James Brown (1655–1718) + Margaret Denison (dau. of Capt. George Denison + Ann Borodell), m. 1678, Swansea → his father James Brown Sr. (c.1623–1710) + Lydia Howland, daughter of Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley.
• Confirmed the GEDCOM's own existing structure already had Thomas Angel (b. Nov 5, 1747, New London, CT) — our independently-traced ancestor, married to Philena Miner — recorded as a son of William Angel (b. 1710). This part of the chain was already correct in the file; only William's parents needed correcting.
• In the process of applying the fix to the live GEDCOM, discovered the underlying error was itself a merge: the individual record for "James Angell" already had the correct parents attached (John Angell + Ruth Field, matching this James 1682) but the wrong birth data (1684, Loquiessett — belonging to a different, unrelated James Angell) and the wrong wife (Susannah Wilkinson). The fix corrected his birth to 1682, Providence, and replaced Susannah Wilkinson with a newly-added Mary Brown record as his wife in the live tree.

Not yet independently re-verified (flagged here for future research)

• Exact Crandall birth year/parish (Westerleigh, Glos., 1618)
• Wickenden's Providence-vs-Newport affiliation detail
• The Rodman collateral-family notes
• Nicholas Brown of Inkberrow's will not naming a son Thomas
• The Momford/Chandler English-side material on Denison

Corrected descent line (Robert's direct ancestry)

John Howland (Mayflower) + Elizabeth Tilley (Mayflower)
  → Lydia Howland (c.1633–aft.1710/11)
  → m. James Brown Sr. (c.1623–1710)
  → Lt. James Brown (1655–1718) + Margaret Denison (dau. Capt. George Denison)
  → Mary Brown (b. 1680, Swansea)
  → m. James Angell (1682–1742), Providence
  → William Angell (1710–1742)
  → Thomas Angell (b. 1747, New London, CT) [already correct in GEDCOM]
  → James Angel (b. 1775) + Mary Pollyann Crandall
  → Polyanna Angell (b. 1815) → Barnes → Bartle Barnes → ... → Robert

Note: only James Angell (1682), Mary Brown, and William Angell exist as individual records in the live GEDCOM so far. The ancestor chain above Mary Brown — James Brown Sr., Lt. James Brown, Margaret Denison, Lydia Howland, John Howland, and Elizabeth Tilley — is documented here and independently verified, but has not yet been entered as records in the tree itself. That would be a genuine (if modest) data-entry project: seven new sourced individuals and their family links, not a correction of anything existing.

What this means for other site pages

• Debunked Myths: the Turner and Brewster Mayflower fabrications remain correctly debunked — this Howland/Tilley line is a SEPARATE, real, verified Mayflower connection, not a revival of either debunked claim.
• Notable Connections: this is your family's one genuine, proven Mayflower gateway, with real GSMD (General Society of Mayflower Descendants) application potential.
• The Denison Family: William Denison of Bishop's Stortford is a direct ancestor through two sons — Daniel (Dudley line) and George (this Mayflower/Angell line). Not an error; pedigree collapse.
• This correction is cross-referenced from both the Barrett–Barnes–Bartle page (which already covers Thomas Angell/Philena Miner) and any future Providence-cluster page.

Explicitly not to be restored (consistent with the Debunked Myths pattern)

• 🔴 "James John Angell" of Muchelney / "Sir Thomas John Angell" of Peakirk / William Henry Angell "the Fishmonger" — unearned English gentry padding on Thomas Angell of Providence's ancestry (parents of Thomas Angell are genuinely unknown)
• 🔴 Chad Brown / Brown University Browns — a completely different Brown immigrant family; do not conflate with the Wannamoiset/Swansea Browns in this line
• 🔴 Sussex Peckham / Archbishop Peckham nobility padding
• 🔴 Turner-as-Mayflower-passenger (already covered in Debunked Myths)