Travel

Walk through a 1667 Plymouth home where Mayflower pilgrims lived

About 2 million people in the U.S., including three presidents, can trace their ancestry to the pilgrim family who lived there.

By Kristi Palma

April 26, 2024

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Plymouth native Peter Arenstam worked on a replica of the Mayflower ship in Plymouth Harbor for years before learning he was a descendant of a pilgrim who arrived on the real ship more than 400 years ago.

Now he spends his time keeping up the 1667 Jabez Howland House, an historic home once lived in by his famous ancestors that will reopen for tours in June. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and billed as the only existing house in Plymouth where pilgrims actually spent time.

The house is named after the son of John and Elizabeth Howland, who both arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. Jabez, their eighth child, bought the property in 1669 and lived there with his wife Bethiah and their family until 1680.

“It’s a literal connection to our history,” said Arenstam, executive director of the Pilgrim John Howland Society, a lineage society founded in 1897 that bought the house and turned it into a museum in 1912 and thoroughly renovated it in the 1940s.

John Howland famously fell overboard during the grueling 66-day trip across the Atlantic on the Mayflower and was almost lost at sea. But he grabbed a rope and was rescued by the crew and would go on to work for John Carver, Plymouth Colony’s first governor, and sign the Mayflower Compact. He would also have 10 children and 88 grandchildren, Arenstam said.

An estimated 2 million people in the U.S. can trace their ancestry back to John and Elizabeth Howland, Arenstam said. Famous Howland descendants include presidents Franklin Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as well as poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and actors Humphrey Bogart, Christopher Lloyd, and Alec Baldwin.

Arenstam discovered he was a descendent in 2010 after a historian looked into his genealogy while he was working for Plimoth Patuxet Museums in Plymouth, a living history museum that has recreated Plymouth Colony and the famous ship.

“I was one of the people who took care of the replica ship, Mayflower II,” Arenstam said. “I helped sail it many times in the course of my time there. That whole time, I didn’t know I was a descendent of John Howland.”

On a recent April morning, he walked the floors of the Jabez Howland House where his ancestors once cooked, cleaned, dined, and made a home.

Visitors at the home really get a sense of what family life was like in the 17th century, he said. The house is filled with period furniture, spinning wheels, artifacts, documents, and even framed letters written by Jabez.

A large wide hearth was discovered and restored during a renovation in the early 20th century, he said. The hearth was a very important part of a home in those days, he said.

“The idea is that you have multiple fires in there for doing multiple things,” he said. “You might be heating water to do laundry in the corner, you might be cooking a meal that requires heat of different intensities and they can all take place in that wide hearth.”

Cooking tools on display in the hearth include a spider skillet with legs for cooking food over a fire, he said, a gridiron, and a toaster made out of cast iron that props up the bread and swivels.

The original part of the home (the right side when facing it) was constructed by carpenter Jacob Mitchell and included one downstairs room and one upstairs room, Arenstam said.

“John dies in 1672. Elizabeth likely lived in this house until 1680 when Jabez and Bethiah moved down to Bristol,” Arenstam said. “She signs on the deed when they sell the house.”

The newer parts of the home were built in the 18th century: four rooms were added in 1720 and and another four were added in 1750, he said.

“As you tour the house, you get to see the evolution of the house, starting in 1667,” he said.

There are two bedrooms on display upstairs and the beds have curtains around them.

“That’s very typical English style and the idea is they’re keeping you warm,” Arenstam said.

A case of preserved artifacts on the second floor features a pewter spoon, armor, and other items. Thousands of other artifacts are stored at Plimoth Patuxet Museums, he said. Many items were unearthed in an archeological dig in the early 20th century at Rocky Nook in Kingston, about four miles away, where John and Elizabeth once lived on 100 acres. The society has sponsored other archeological digs at the site as recent as last year, Arenstam said, and items are still being discovered.

“Everything is intriguing when you think that this object, whether it’s a needle, a sewing pin, or a pipe stem from a clay pipe that was broken off because it was clogged with tar and discarded in the yard, all of those things were touched by people who lived in the 17th century who came on the Mayflower. It’s pretty neat,” Arenstam said.

Howland descendants have also donated items such as bibles, samplers, and a finger bowl once used to wash one’s hands during meal time.

Even the grounds transport visitors back in time.

“We have herb gardens outside and a vegetable garden representing the kind of herb and vegetable garden they would have had in the 17th century,” said Arenstam, who currently cares for the gardens.

The Jabez Howland House reopens June 14 for tours. The tours, which run through Nov. 1, take place Thursday through Monday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Reservations are not required and guides take visitors through the house.

Travelers looking for more ways to learn about pilgrims while visiting Plymouth can check out Pilgrim Hall, full of Pilgrim artifacts and billed as the oldest continuously operating public museum in the country, Arenstam said, and Plimoth Patuxet Museums, recently named the best open-air museum in America by USA Today readers.

Editor’s note: In the coming months, Boston.com will be featuring historical sites around Greater Boston as chosen by staff and suggested by readers. Enter your suggestion in the form below.