The City Of Chester.

pay him the money, she resisted, as she had not come as a redemptioner. Davis had her arrested for debt. She was thrown into prison, but was relieved therefrom by some Friends, who paid the claim and employed her in their families as a teacher of their children. At this time she was not a Quaker, but the kindness of these people attracted her towards them, and finally she united with the society and became ultimately one of its most efficient ministers. It is recorded that at a meeting at Haverford, David and Grace Lloyd came in, and immediately Jane Fenn, who was present, was impressed with the conviction that "these were the people with whom she must go and settle," while David and Grace Lloyd were in their turn impressed with Jane, "and it was fixed in their minds to take her for the Lord's service." She lived with them until 1727, when she visited England and Ireland on a religious mission, and returned to Chester in 1730, a short time previous to David Lloyd's death. She remained with his widow until her (Jane Fenn's) marriage to Joseph Hoskins, Eighth month 26, 1738, at Chester Meeting.

The Porter (Lloyd) House, Built In 1721, Destroyed By Explosion Feb. 17, 1882.
[From photograph owned by W. W. Amos.]

On May 1, 1741, Grace Lloyd conveyed the mansion and most of the real estate she acquired under her husband's will to Joseph Hoskins, reserving two acres of ground, and "also the room in the southwest corner of the mansion-house, called the dining-room, the room on the northeast corner of said house, called the parlor, with a closet and milk-house adjoining, the chamber over the said dining-room, the chamber over the said parlor, one-half part of the garret; the front part of the cellar, the old kitchen and chamber over it, the chaise-house, the use of the pump, cider-mill and cider-press to make her own cider, and part of the garden, with free liberty of ingress, egress and regress into and out of all and every the premises for the term of her natural life without impeachment of waste." Grace Lloyd died in 1760.

Joseph Hoskins was one of the most useful citizens Chester has ever numbered among its residents. He was an enterprising, public-spirited man, doing good and asking no mere gratification of his personal vanity by coupling his gift with conditions that the donor's name should be made conspicuous and held in remembrance because of these works by which others should be benefited. He gave because his heart prompted the act in the love he bore his fellows. Joseph Hoskins was born in Chester, June 30, 1705, and seems to have been an active man of business. When twenty-six years of age he made a voyage to the island of Barbadoes, but returned after a short absence, and in 1739, after his marriage, he went to Boston on business. In the early days of our country a journey such as this was a remarkable event in a man's life, and at this time more persons can be found in Chester, in proportion to its population, who have visited Japan than, at the period I am alluding to, who had made a voyage to Boston. He was made chief burgess of Chester and one of his majesty's justices of the peace in 1758. By his will, dated Twelfth month, 1769, he devised certain lands in the borough of Chester for school purposes, more fully mentioned under that heading, and also gave ten pounds towards inclosing Friends' graveyard, on Edgmont Avenue, with a brick or stone wall. Being childless, the residue of his estate, after a few bequests to relatives and friends, he devised to his nephew, John Hoskins, of Burlington, N. J. This John Hoskins, in 1750, had married Mary, a daughter of Joshua and Sarah Raper, of Burlington, and their son, Raper Hoskins, who came to Chester in charge of his father's property there, on May 2, 1781, married Eleanor, daughter of Henry Hale Graham, while Joseph Hoskins, Raper Hoskins' brother, married, June 12, 1793, Mary, a younger daughter of Henry Hale Graham. John Hoskins, to whom the estate descended under Joseph Hoskins' will, after holding the title to the premises for eighteen years, on March 22, 1791, made a deed conveying a large tract of land, comprising that whereon the old mansion-house stood, to Raper Hoskins. The latter having died in the fall of the year 1798, a victim of the yellow-fever scourge in Chester, his widow, Eleanor Hoskins, was granted letters on his estate, and in dis-