Israel How(e) 1712-1748
Twelve years ago I wrote the following : “Some ancestors yield complex and fascinating stories. Some seem to be just a footnote in the family tree. Such is the fate of my 5x great grandfather, Israel How. Unlike the other Israel I wrote about last week–Israel Stone, this Israel did not have an exciting life.”
2026: I owe Israel How an apology. I wrote earlier that his life was merely an asterisk. But his life was anything but dull. According to As Ancient is This Hostelry: The Story of the Wayside Inn and other sources, Israel How was killed by Indians in a raid on Rutland, Massachusetts. This makes Israel How one of several How family members who were victims of the long-running struggle between the English colonists and the indigenous people determined to protect their traditional hunting grounds. The father of four children, one just days old, was killed at the age of 36 because he was an Indian fighter. So I am rewriting this post.
Israel was right in the middle of the seven children of David and Hephzibah (Death) How. Israel grew up in Sudbury, used to having strangers around, since his father David How ran a tavern/inn on a 300 acre piece of land along the busy post road to Boston. (Going west from Boston, Sudbury is the sixth stop along the northernmost Boston Post Road.)
Map of the various routes of the Boston Post Road, from book, Old Boston Post Road.
Young Israel would have seen stagecoaches stopping every day and people of the community would have gathered at How’s Tavern to pick up packages and town gossip.
You may have noticed in the birth and death dates above that Israel had a very short life. He did not marry Elizabeth Hubbard until 1740 when he was twenty-eight years old, and he died in 1748.
Israel and Elizabeth’s children:
Israel (Jr.) (1742-1745)
Lucy (1743-1819) Named for his mother’s sister. Married Elijah Demond.
Elizabeth How Stone (1744-1829) My 4th great grandmother, who may have been born at the Wayside Inn (then called the How Inn). married my 4th great grandfather, Jeduthan Stone.
Ruth (1746-1809) Named for Israel’s sister. Married Ephraim Smith.
Rebecka (1748-1845) Married first to Benjamin FISKE and then to William Merriam
Since all of their children were born in Rutland, he either moved to Rutland as a young man, or immediately after he was married. The latter is probable, since Elizabeth Hubbard was born in Marlborough, next door to Sudbury.
Courts approved the purchase of the land comprising Rutland in 1714, subject to the three men who were given deeds finding 62 families to settle there in the next few years. Captain Samuel Stone (another of my ancestors) was one of the three. Samuel came from Sudbury originally, and drew many settlers from there, including Israel and his brother Eliphalet Howe and cousin Eliphalet Stone.
See the distance from Sudbury to Rutland on this Google Map
Three days after Rebekah was born, Israel died on June 23, 1748. The Abenaki tribe who had left New England for Canada when the English population crowded them out of their hunting grounds, raided Rutland on June 23, 1748. This action was considered a border skirmish of the French and Indian War. The war ended officiaLly when the French and English signed a treaty a few months later.
Israel , it turns out, was much more than a footnote in family history.
His widow, remarried and as Elizabeth Barrett, signed a statement in the probate of her father-in-law, David How’s Will, that she was the guardian of his grandchildren (Israel’s four surviving children) and had received their legacies.
How I am related
- Vera Marie (Badertscher) is the daughter of
- Harriette Anderson (Kaser), the daughter of
- Vera Stout (Anderson), the daughter of
- Hattie Morgan (Stout), the daughter of
- Mary Bassett (Morgan), the daughter of
- Elizabeth Stone (Basset), the daughter of
- Elizabeth Howe (Stone), the daughter of
- Israel How and Elizabeth Hubbard
Research notes:
Scant mention of Israel How is made in the discussions of the Howes in the various sources I am using to trace this family, so I have depended on the bare facts of birth and death records recorded in Sudbury and Rutland Massachusetts which I find at Ancestry.com.
Information and map of Boston Post Road comes from Wikipedia. Click on the map to see the original image, which is in the public domain. Wikipedia’s article includes locations of existing milestones, and the way that modern highways follow the Post Road.
