JOHN JONES AND SARAH TAYLOR
John Jones of East Bradford first appeared in Chester County records in 1738, when he was listed as a landholder.1 His origins are not known, even whether he was born in Pennsylvania or emigrated.2 Around 1732 John married Sarah Taylor, the daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Taylor, who were members of Concord Monthly Meeting. John too was a Quaker. When he went before a justice in 1744 to attest to the will of his brother-in-law Richard Taylor, John affirmed rather than swearing.3
Sarah was born in Kennett Township, near the Forks of the Brandywine, in 1711. If John was a few years older, then he would have been born about 1708. He died in 1772, when he would have been in his 60s.4
In 1744 Sarah’s father Joseph Taylor died and left her a tract of land in East Bradford containing 26 acres. Sarah’s husband John and their sons built a mill there on the Brandywine River, later known as Sager’s Mill.5 There were two mills, a sawmill and corn mill, still owned in common in 1773, when one of the sons, Edward, sold his share.6
“By 1740 Joseph Taylor was a large land owner in the Brandywine Valley near Lenape. In 1744 he deeded twenty-six acres of land located on the east side of the Brandywine to his daughter, Mrs. Jones, whose husband and sons soon built a dam and erected a grist and saw mill… The mill property was purchased by Joel Baily in 1775 and sold two years later to Benjamin Powell for one thousand pounds. Among owners in subsequent years was Isaac Dixon who, in 1817, was running the grist and saw mills and built a four story cotton factory. This was known as Adelphi Cotton Works and produced cotton yarn and muslin… The property was purchased in 1855 by John P. Sager, a mill from Delaware County.”7
John was taxed in East Bradford for the saw mill and grist mill on this tract through 1770. In addition to the mill John probably farmed on the remainder of the land. They kept a horse or two and three cows, to provide milk for the family.8
John and Sarah were probably members of Bradford Meeting. In 1741 when her brother Samuel married Deborah Darlington at Bradford Meeting, Sarah and John both signed, along with some of Sarah’s siblings and relatives.
John did not leave a will. When he died in March 1772 in East Bradford, letters of administration were granted to Sarah his widow. She died three years later, living in East Bradford. Her will was written in January 1775 and proved in June 1775. In it she named sons Edward, John and Benjamin, daughters Hannah, “wife of Thomas Temple” (sic), Lydia, wife of James Jefferis, Elizabeth Harlan, Cordelia Webb, and Ann Chandler.9
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