The City Of Chester.
and porch, which were located before the street-line was definitely fixed, extend a goodly distance into the sidewalk. A hall-way runs through the centre of the building; a wide, easily-ascended staircase rises from the rear of the entry at the south side to the apartments above. The balustrade is fashioned of hard wood and is very massive, while the steps of ash in many places show marks of worms, who have eaten deep grooves in the solid planking. The windows in the lower rooms are deeply recessed within the apartments, and old-time seats constructed therein. The heavy beams supporting the upper floors stand prominently out from the ceiling. In the rooms on the first and second floors on the north side of the house the high, old-fashioned wooden mantels over the large fireplaces are flanked by enormous closets, which are lighted by small windows in the outer walls; those in the southern end have been walled up. The floors are laid in hard wood, and the flooring-boards are wide,- almost the entire width of the trees from which they were cut. The ceilings are lofty for the time when the building was erected, and the house is divided into numerous sleeping apartments intended to accommodate many guests. The steep roof externally would indicate that the attics were so low that they would be uncomfortable to the inmates, whereas the contrary is the fact. The kitchen, which is built in an L on the northeastern end of the house, is large; the fireplace comprising almost the entire eastern end, - now inclosed as a closet, - is of that ample size, usual among our ancestors, that the benumbed wayfarers could seat themselves at either side of the chimney, on benches provided for that purpose, and enjoy the warmth of the roaring fire of huge logs, formerly the only way employed to heat that part of the building. In the days of its ancient grandeur there was a portico or veranda in the rear of the main building extending ten or twelve feet outward, which was inclosed with lattice-work, where, in the summer-time, the hospitable table was spread. An old oven, long since torn down, was attached to the house on the north side of the kitchen, and a well of good water, now abandoned, was located in the rear and at some distance from the portico.
John Hoskins and Mary, his wife, were natives of Cheshire, England, and came to this country in the year 1682. In August, 1684, he purchased from John Simcock the property whereon he afterwards built the house; and he had purchased Ninth month 21, 1681, from Penn, before leaving England, two hundred and fifty acres of land, which was laid out to him in Middletown township, between the lands of Richard Crosby and David Ogden, Fourth month 27, 1684. He was a member of the General Assembly which sat March 12, 1683. His will, dated Eleventh month 2, 1694/5, and probated Aug. 15, 1698, in Philadelphia, is signed John Hodgskins, but the renunciation of the executors named therein, dated 12th of Sixth month, 1698, speaks of him as John Hoskins. He left two children, John and Hannah, and his widow, who although aged, married in 1700, George Woodier, of Chester. His daughter, Hannah, married, in 1698, Charles Whitaker. His estate was a large one for those times, the appraisement amounting to £450 12s. 2d., and the different articles set forth therein, as contained in the various rooms of the house wherein he died, answer to the number in the present Graham house.
His son, John Hoskins, married in 1698, Ruth Atkinson, and in 1700, when only twenty-three years of age, was elected sheriff of the county, an office the duties of which he discharged so successfully that for fifteen years in succession, excepting during the year 1708, he was continued in that office. To him the old homestead descended, and here he lived until his death, Oct. 26, 1716. He was the father of four sons and one daughter, Mary, who married John Mather. One of the sons, I suppose, died before their mother,