Career
Early Later In 1716, she moved to the Quaker community of Haverford, and in 1718 to Chester, where she became the housekeeper and protégé of David Lloyd, a leading Quaker and the chief justice of Pennsylvania. In 1721, she began to travel locally as a minister, in company with Elizabeth Levis. In 1722, the women extended their ministry to Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.
In 1725, they journeyed to Barbados, Rhode Island, Nantucket, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia.
In 1727, with Abigail Bowles, she took the ministry to England and Ireland. Over the next thirty years, she continued to travel the eastern seaboard, speaking in Friends’ meetings and also preaching in public venues.
On her life and the significance of her narrative, see Michele Lise Tarter, “Jane Fenn Hoskens,” Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 200: American Women Prose Writers to 1820, educated Carla Mulford (Detroit: Gale Research, 1999), pp.
187–194; and Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775 (New York, Alfred A Knopf, 1999).
