2 October 2008 The Rest is History
In today’s semi-socialist society, with all sorts of federal programs caring for the medical and social needs of people, one might not ever find a need for a bowel of hot soup and a piece of bread. However, back in the 19th Century none of these social or medical programs existed and the burden of providing for those in need fell on individuals’ families, their churches, local businesses, and perhaps other charitable groups.
One such local charitable group in Fishtown was the Kensington Soup Society, which was founded in 1844. By looking at just one slice of a time period of the Soup Society’s history (the Civil War and post war years), we can see how great the need was for a soup house and how a community rallied to help its residents.
During the 1860’s the Kensington Soup Society expanded their soup distribution operations by moving from the original small soup house at 208 Allen Street to a slightly larger facility at nearby 247 Allen Street. Still later, in 1870, the Soup Society purchased the Crease Street property and built for the first time a building that was solely designed as a soup house. These efforts to expand and meet the demands of the residents of Kensington came under the directorship of George Stockham, who for the decade of 1862 to 1872 served as the Soup Society’s President. With the expansion to 247 Allen Street, then to the greatly expanded Crease Street Soup House, the Kensington Soup Society was better able to meet the needs of Kensington’s poor.
During the Civil War years (1860-1865), when the charity of the Soup House was highly needed, the Soup Society, besides calling for monetary contributions, also called for contributions of flour, meat, vegetables, and even wood. As early as 1861 the Soup House at 208 Allen Street was distributing 1,040 points of soup a day, with bread. The demand was so great the Soup Society was forced to advertise for contributions, as they were “not able to supply the demands of the needful, which are daily increasing.”
A report published in the local paper in February of 1866, stated that during a 42-day period of the season of 1865-66, the Soup House distributed 5,250 gallons of soup. It amounted to an average of 125 gallons per day, with upwards of 2,500 loaves of bread given out three times a week. In all the Soup Society fed 1,100 people each day that it was opened.
Even after the war the let up did not come. Already set up in the new 247 Allen Street Soup House, the Society in a one week period during January of 1867, gave out 3,240 pints of soup, along with 1,463 loaves of bread, to 287 families, made up of 1,060 people. The call for help that went out stated, “the institution is cramped in its work for lack of means, and deserves a liberal patronage.”
Since the Soup Society records are all but lost for the period previous to November of 1875, we have to rely on the newspaper appeals and advertisements in order to see what the distribution numbers were for the Soup House. One report given right before the 1873-74 Annual Report was found in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 12 December 1872. This report stated that the Soup Society gave out 12,600 gallons of soup the past season (1870-71), averaging 140 gallons a day, with 75 pounds of meat per day being consumed. There were 100 bushels of potatoes and 15 barrels of beans used during that season. The income from all sources was $1,703.85, with general expenses being $1,67543. The interest on the mortgage of the new Soup House on Crease Street was $216.00, and they had $400.00 invested to aid in the payment of the mortgage on the building. The final analysis was that the Kensington Soup Society was $3,600.00 in debt and “contributions are earnestly invited to meet the incubus.”
One of the last newspaper reports found before the Society’s Meeting Minute ledgers take up their history was found in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the 26th of February 1874. The Society stated that they were “doing good work in the way of taking care of the suffering and worthy poor.” They were now “distributing daily 8,840 pints of soup to 413 families, consisting of 2,065 adults and children, and every other day they distribute 2,000 loaves of bread, besides feeding daily from 30 to 40 wayfarers.”
Besides documenting the pre-1875 years of the Soup Society, these newspaper articles in the local papers were also a good means of getting the word out to neighborhood folks to let them know that the soup was ready!
9 October The Rest is History
One of the great things about being a local history column writer is you get to meet all sorts of interesting folks. A fellow named David Wright contacted me this week and inquired about Henry A. Hitner’s Sons. I knew of them, but not much, so Dave filled me in on the company rather interesting history.
Henry Adam Hitner was one best-known iron dealers. He was also famous for being a pioneer in the “ship scrapping” business; buying unwanted naval vessels from the United States Navy and recycling them by cutting them up and selling the scrap iron and other metals, or in some cases salvaging the hulls and selling them to be converted for more peaceful activities.
Henry was born in 1833 in Lichtenburg, Bavaria and came to Philadelphia in 1847, possibly with his brother, when he was only 15 years old. He settled in the Kensington.
Hitner first got into the iron business in the 1850s. His business was located at Gaul & Sergeant Streets and when expanded included the blocks bordered by Gaul, Huntington, Moyer and Sergeant Streets. The company also had a scrap yard with a one thousand foot frontage on the Delaware River. The scrap yard on the river was located “near to Girard Point, within sight of League Island.”
In 1860 Henry Hitner was located in the 19th Ward. His presumed brother Morris was a blacksmith, Henry a wheelwright. Henry founded his iron business sometime in the late 1860s. He eventually married and had five sons: Harry (1856), John (1857), Frederick (1859), Joseph G. (1863), and Richard (1865), as well as at least two daughters.
By 1870 Hitner was living on the 2300 block of Dickinson (Firth) Street. By the 1880 Census he was an iron dealer living at 921 E. Cumberland Street. The addressing system was different in 1880, and this address was near Gaul Street. Henry’s three sons, Frederick, Joseph and Richard, were all listed in 1880as working in the "iron store” with their father.
In 1893 Hitner applied to the city to erect a frame building on Fox (Hazard) Street, 80 feet east of Gaul Street. The building was to be used for steam shearing and machinery purposes.
The 1900 Census finds Henry had moved to 2401 Napa Street, near 31st Street in Philadelphia’s 28th Ward (between Susquehanna & Lehigh, from Broad to the Schuylkill River). He and his wife were living on their own, the children all grown and out of the house. Henry’s son Joseph G. Hitner followed his father into business and worked as an iron merchant. He moved out of Kensington to the new upcoming neighborhood of big homes on 1200 block of W. Lehigh Avenue.
On 9 September 1902, it was announced that Architects Heacock & Hokanson had finished their plans for the foundations for a large one-story steel crane storage building to be erected at Aramingo, Huntington, and Commerce (Moyer) Streets
The business had grown from modest proportions to one of the largest in the country Other sons of Hitner followed their father into the iron scrapping business and the company became known as Henry A. Hitner’s Sons Company. Grandsons of Henry also were brought into the business when they came of age and the company expanded with offices in New Jersey and New York.
Henry A. Hitner finally succumbed to complication of rheumatism and other diseases, dying at his home at 2020 Marston Street, on 4 September 1901. A wife and seven children survived him.
His obituary tells us that he was a prominent member of Schiller Verein and also took an active interest in the affairs of Decatur Lodge, NO. 35, I. O.O.F. (International Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal group). In his Thirty-First Ward, he was one of the oldest residents. He was an active Republican and belonged to several political clubs. .
A news article in 1932 on the scrap industry in America, pointed out that at one point in time, Henry A. Hitner’s Son Co., had tied up at their waterfront yard awaiting the torch, three battleships, 26 submarines and destroyers, plus 55,000 tons of auxiliary vessels. Hitner’s Son purchased this large quantity of scrap iron when the Limitation of Armament Conference at Washington was signed by the United States in 1922. This treaty restricted a completed or under-construction naval program of the United States from approximately 1,370,000 tons to 525,000 tons. The treaty was an attempt to reduce the arms race after the end of World War One.
An example of some of the ships that came into Hitner’s hands was the battleships Maine, Missouri, and Wisconsin. If it Kensingtonians weren’t building the great ships of the world, they were recycling them. What a neighborhood!
16 October 2008 The Rest is History
For this life long resident of the neighborhood, it’s almost difficult to recall the year 1978, the year that the Fishtown Star was founded. I remember reading the old Penn Treaty Gazette and some of the old historical articles written by Molmer and others, but I can’t really recall just when I started to read the Star. A lot has happened in the neighborhood in the last thirty years and the biggest thing has to be great development that has taken place by the new folks moving into the neighborhood.
Development in the neighborhood is a double edge sword. You like it because it’s nice to see all the abandoned buildings gone, the old factories being restored and reused, and the waterfront being built up. However, much of what you liked about living here starts to dissipate as well as the neighborhood is transformed by other ideas of what a neighborhood should be. The closeness of the neighbors is changing, as many blocks are becoming more transient with renters coming and going, and speculators flip houses quicker then you can flip pancakes. You never know who’s who!
Don’t get me wrong, I think the gentrification of the neighborhood is great, but are we going to become just another “Anytown, U.S.A.” now? We’re a long way from Northampton, Massachusetts, but do we really want to become some hip trendy place void of any character? Or our homegrown characters?
Joking aside, I think its great that folks want to move to the big city and I welcome them, particularly in the light of the following facts on Philadelphia’s population history.
At the time the Fishtown Star was founded (1978) Philadelphia’s population was estimated at 1,725,339 people, two years later the population numbers on the 1980 Census gave the figure at 1,688.210, a loss of 37,129 in just two years. The trend continued as Philadelphia’s population dwindled to 1,585,577 in 1990, then to 1,517,550 in the year 2000 and to 1,449,634 by the year 2007.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1978 and 2007 Philadelphia lost 275,705 people. Over a quarter of a million of the city’s residents left in a 30-year period for the suburbs and beyond, so I suppose we here in Fishtown should welcome those that are bucking this trend.
During our current decade from 2000 to 2007, it is estimated by the Bureau of Census that Philadelphia lost 4.5% of its residents (67,916 people) and this at a time when it appears that a number of neighborhoods in the city are seeing a rebirth!
Much of this population loss is undoubtedly due to the horrible state of most public schools and the very serious violent crime problem that flashes across the 11 o’clock news every night. While the city lost over a quarter million of its residents in little more then a quarter of a century, one would think the number of violent crimes would have decreased proportionally. However, incidents of violent crime actually increased from 17,620 violent crimes (1 per 95 residents) in 1981 to 21,609 violent crimes (1 per 67 residents) in 2005. It appears that the criminals stayed behind during the big move to the burbs.
Combine violent crime, poor schools, and the city government’s unfriendly business climate, with the high taxes needed by the city to foot the bill for the 25% of the city’s residents who live at the poverty level or below, and you have a Catch 22, where the people that the city needs the most (businesses and the middle class) are taxed out of the city and are fleeing to the burbs. The overwhelming amount of people in poverty, almost 1 out of 4 people, is crippling the city services and tax revenues. The city’s answer? Gambling!
In general, areas along the Delaware riverfront remained stable or actually saw an increase in population. The western and northwestern areas of Kensington saw a decrease in their population, as did the western parts of Port Richmond. These areas suffered greatly during the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. A once stable working class community seemed to became a drug-infested haven almost overnight. K & A, once the heart of Kensington, fell to dope fiends and thieves and under the EL from Girard Avenue to Tioga became known the east coast over for its prostitution and male hustlers.
Fishtown, while experiencing some problems with the influx of druggies during the 1980s and 1990s, was able to remain stable. While there was some population loss (1,250 in the 1990s) it was somewhat offset with the influx of the newly liberated Albanian immigrants who came to Fishtown in droves once Communism fell in their country. Fishtown can thank the Albanians for helping to stabilize the community during the 1990s while neighborhoods all around her were losing population.
The Albanians were a throwback to the hardy stock of immigrants who populated the city in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. In a few short years they were buying homes, fixing them up, working every sort of job imaginable and their children were helping to bring the overall test scores up at the local public schools. Local teachers and librarians were heard to comment upon the academic excellence and discipline of these new Americans. There were so many Albanians from the Albanian city of Fier moving to Fishtown, that amongst themselves they called Fishtown, “Fiertown.” There were so many Albanians in the area that eventually one of them moved into my house! My wife!
This stabilization by the Albanians lasted long enough to get Fishtown to the point where the gentrifiers started arriving in the late 1990s, further helping to stabilize the housing stock in the community. Along with the greening programs and development work of the New Kensington CDC, Fishtown and most of New Kensington, were spared the decline experienced by so many of the city’s neighborhoods.
With the population loss to the city, there were the eventual closings of a number of churches and of parochial schools. Locally, St. Boniface closed their church in 1996 and Holy Name and St. Michael’s both closed their schools in recent years, as did some nearby Catholic schools in Port Richmond. A number of Protestant churches closed as well. One church in particular was Emmanuel Episcopal on Marlborough Street off of Girard, who merged with The Church of the Good Shepherd over at Collins & Cumberland Streets, only to have that church close its doors just a couple of years ago. Gentrifiers, gobble up these old churches making artist studios or private homes causing Fishtowners to lose to private use a many of its public structures.
In the 1960s blocks and blocks of Fishtown were razed when Interstate I-95 was built to accommodate all those people that fled the city to the suburbs between the end of World War Two and the 1960s. During that time Philadelphia also lost several hundred thousand residents to the burbs. After the building of I-95, Fishtown was cut off from the Delaware River.
Penn Treaty Park, the pride of Fishtown, was succumbed by all practical measurements to abandonment by the Fairmount Park Commission in the early 1970s. The old fishing pier was in a shambles, the comfort stations sat destroyed by vandals. However the Bicentennial in 1976 brought some new life and renovation to the park and then in 1982 the park was further renovated for Pennsylvania’s Tercentenary.
Once the neighborhood was separated from the river by the building of I-95 and with the decline in the manufacturing sector of the American economy, the old industrial areas of the riverfront were laid to ruins. Jack Frost Sugar closed in 1981 and the 18 massive buildings of that refinery stood vacant for a decade and a half before being imploded. The owner of the property sat on it for another decade waiting for gambling legislation to be passed, which it was and now the controversial SugarHouse Casino project is proposed for the area. Many of the other abandoned sites along the river also have grand development ideas attached to them.
A then newly formed civic group, the Fishtown Civic Association, founded during the building of I-95, became active in the community in the mid 1960s. They, along with an older group called the Kensington Community Council and much hard work by various individuals, were able to convince the city government to expand Penn Treaty Park and in 1987 a newly rededicated park was opened with a 5-acre expansion. A Friends of the Park group was founded for the occasion.
As it is often with community groups, they are difficult to keep going, particularly volunteer groups. After some time the Fishtown Civic Association self imploded and the Friends of the Park somewhat disbanded. But the new blood moving into the neighborhood and some old timers waiting for help, have helped to revive these old groups. The Friends of Penn Treaty Park now have a very active group and the Fishtown Civic was reincarnated with the founding of the Fishtown Neighbors Association (FNA).
At the time FNA was founded, New Kensington CDC had expanded some of their greening services into Fishtown, due to the old civic association being defunct. The encroachment of New Kensington on Fishtown’s “turf” was enough to startle that area and FNA appears to have been the result, or perhaps it was just coincidental. Either way, the more community groups the better, since it ultimately means we have a very active citizenry. An active citizenry gets the ear of the politicians and city government will listen more now then they have in the past. The future for Fishtown is brighter, once the housing market can straighten itself out and with the neighborhood having a paper like the Fishtown Star to enlighten their readers; we have to like our chances for another thirty years.
23 October 2008 The Rest is History
In a previous column I wrote about Google Books, the online web search engine that allows you to do keyword searches of millions of books. Google Books has been continuing to scan and put up books and recently I did a search for Fishtown.
If you go to the website www.google.com and click on the "more" button, then click on the "books" button, you can type in the word "Fishtown" and come up with over 700 hits for books where someone has written a book that mentions Fishtown.
In some cases it merely mentions the neighborhood in Philadelphia, or the town in Liberia, in Africa. There also appears to be a Fishtown in Virginia and several other areas in the country as well.
My own book, Remembering Kensington & Fishtown, comes up as the first hit and you can actually read a good chunk of the book for free. Annals of the Kensington Methodist Episcopal Church has recently been put up and you can read this 1893 history “Old Brick” in full. Another new book is Budgets of Families and Individuals of Kensington, Philadelphia, published in 1920. This is also available in full view.
There have been a number of books, published in recent years since the gentrification of Fishtown, where writers and poets have written about Fishtown. Sometimes it’s a poem and sometimes it’s even a novel, where Fishtown has been used as the backdrop of the story.
There are several linguistic and sociological related books that were published over the last decade, or so. I'm guessing that these social scientists hurried these books out since the gentrification of the neighborhood and the influx of the middle class moving in will soon help to turn our historically close-knit white working class enclave into "Anywhere, U.S.A.," devoid of the rich character and characters which is the heart of Fishtown and Kensington.
In modern times our area has been a hotbed for the social scientist. Many of the social ills that our country has faced over the past forty years as it has transitioned itself from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, have effected many of our neighbors. I recall on a number of occasions in the mid-1990s taking some of these professor types and their grad students for tours of the community, some were actually afraid to get off the bus!
I also remember a PhD student from Penn who moved to the neighborhood to write her dissertation. I read the final work and disagreed with a good bit of it. I couldn’t see how it was possible to disassociate yourself from the prejudices you bring with you and write objectively, since your mindset is the paradigm of the environment you grew up in and it’s difficult to escape that fact regardless of how much training you had at the university. If I tried to write an objective piece on the neighborhood, my writing would be prejudiced as well, since I have my own particular paradigm that I was schooled and raised within.
I know this sounds all rather skeptical and pessimistic, but when you live in one place long enough (like fifty years), you see these studies come and go over and over.
However, there are some interesting items on Google Books, particularly a linguistic study, where you can read about the similarities of Fishtown (Philadelphia) speak having linguistic patterns like Northern Ireland. Alas, our particular Fishtown speak will also disappear as gentrification and the influx of the middle class changes our speech patterns over time, much like the Pinnies down in South Jersey's Pine Barrens have had their unique 17th Century dialects changed as their isolation slowly was destroyed by the developers creeping into their communities
Do I sound provincial? I suppose I do, but I can’t seem to get over the fact that people come into our community and study us as if we are some kind of species that needs to be examined! I for one would like to see them look at their colleagues in the suburbs.
If you are ever down town in the morning you’ll see them, like ants, they come up out of the holes in the ground that seem to be dug every several blocks or so, and once out of the hole they shoot like mad into those tall ant hills. Then like clockwork, at 4 or 5 every afternoon, they come out of the buildings and head straight down into the holes again, repeating this process five times a week. Amazing! Who are these people and where do they come from?
30 October 2008 The Rest is History
The oldest school in either Fishtown or Kensington is the “Yellow School House.” The school sat on the south side of Marlborough Street, half way between Belgrade and Thompson Streets. The property had a 107-foot front on Marlborough and had a depth of 100 feet. The address of the property corresponds to today’s1324-1336 Marlborough Street.
There is no record of who built or designed the school, but it was a two and a half story brick building of wood construction, with a shingle roof, sod yard, and sidewalk paving. The building had eight classrooms with detached unheated toilets. The schoolhouse itself was 60 foot by 100 foot, the schoolyard 47 foot by 100 foot and sat adjacent and to the west of the schoolhouse.
The structure was built before the American Revolution. It had been used as a school locally since about the year 1780. During the American Revolution the building was used as a hospital, presumably by the Americans, as it was too far out from the city for the British to use it when they occupied Philadelphia from September 1777 to June of 1778. However, the school did sit about three of four blocks from British Redoubt No.1, the Revolutionary War fort built by the British on the SugarHouse Casino site at Shackamaxon and the Delaware.
The First School District (which included all of Philadelphia County) purchased the schoolhouse (not the property) on June 19th, 1819 for $1,000 from Caleb Carmalt. The building was remodeled at a cost of $3,121.77 and reopened in the early part of 1820. At this time (1820), Kensington had just become a self-governing district within the County of Philadelphia.
At some point Thomas H. Rice and his wife Elizabeth acquired the schoolhouse property (probably through inheritance). On October 26th, 1864, the Rices entered into an agreement with the School Board for a ground rent of $117.50 per year. This is how it remained until October 13th, 1899, when the School Board finally extinguished the ground rent for $1,958.33.
By the year 1867, the Yellow School House had outlived it usefulness and was taken down by the Philadelphia School District and the George W. Vaughan School was built in its place. According to the archives of the Philadelphia School Board, the Vaughan School was built at a cost of $33,000 and was named to honor a local Kensington (Fishtown) family.
George Washington Vaughan (1813-1873) was the son of William B. Vaughan (1788-1864), shipwright, and Roxanna Van Hook (1794-1852). William B. Vaughan was the fourth son of Kensington’s Revolutionary War Militiaman, Thomas Vaughan, and the brother of John Vaughan, who like George W., were early participants in the founding of the Kensington Soup Society. George’s cousin, Jacob Keen Vaughan, also was involved with the founding of the Soup Society, as was his cousin’s husband Joseph Bennett, the husband of Catharine Creamer, whose mother was Margaret Vaughan, the sister of William B. & John Vaughan.
George W. Vaughan became a pharmacist. In 1841 he bought the place at the corner of Richmond & Shackamaxon Streets and ran a pharmacy until he died on 8 Sept 1873. He introduced a line of patent medicines called “Vaughan’s Remedies” which were popular in the area.
George W. Vaughan was a vestryman of, and held a pew in, the Emmanuel Episcopal Protestant Church of Kensington, whose building sits on Marlborough Street west of Girard, but whose congregation is now defunct.
Vaughan never married and kept himself busy by being active in the public schools, serving as a member of the Kensington School District Board (1846-1853) when Kensington was a self-governing entity. After consolidation (1854) he continued to serve on the School Board from 1854 to 1870 for the 18th Section (Kensington). He also served as the School Board’s Secretary for the years 1860-64 and 1867-70. Thus Vaughan’s activity in the School District was honored with the local school being named after him.
George W. Vaughan did follow the family trade of shipbuilder. The family was some of the finest shipbuilders in America. They ran shipbuilding (later wharf building) operations throughout much of the 19th Century at various places on the Delaware River between Columbia Avenue and Shackamaxon Street.
The Vaughan School was a Victorian three-story brownstone building with three gables and a slate roof, brickyard and footways and seventeen classrooms. It was twice as big as the old Yellow School House. The Vaughan School was taken down sometime around the 1970s and a row of homes built in its place. Those homes still stand; they are the newer ones that are set back from the street.
6 November 2008 The Rest is History
On February 2, 1871, thieves disguised as policemen, stole over $120,00 in cash and bonds from the Kensington National Bank. Compared to today, the value of $120,000 in 1871 dollars would at least $2 million today. It was at the time the most extensive and most successful burglary ever perpetrated in Philadelphia’s history.
The Kensington National Bank was located in an old three-story brick building on the east side of Beach Street, a few doors south of Laurel Street. It would later move to the southeast corner of Frankford & Girard Avenues, where the building still exists, but is occupied by Wachovia Bank.
Back on February 2, 1871, at the close of the day, a man in a policeman’s uniform entered the bank on Beach Street and requested to see the cashier, William McConnell. The police officer told McConnell to keep a watch out, as there were suspicious characters in the neighborhood. The policeman left and McConnell told his watchmen to be cautious there might be a burglary planned for tonight.
At 7 o’clock that evening, two men, one of them the policeman who visited the bank earlier in the day, and another man, also dressed as a police officer, knocked on the bank’s door. Morris Murphy, one of the watchmen, answered the door and the men asked to see John Holmes, the other watchman, who the men had spoken to earlier in the day about the suspicious activity in the area. Murphy had not arrived at work yet earlier in the day, when the men first appeared and did not know the men. He summoned Holmes who recognized the policeman, so Murphy let the men into the bank.
When the robbers came to the bank’s door that night they were surprised to see Murphy answer the door, so they asked to see Homes, as it was Holmes that they made it a point to speak with and find out his name earlier in the day. When Holmes came to the door, he told Murphy he knew the men, so Murphy let them in.
After talking briefly with the watchmen about suspicious activity in the area, one of the men asked for a drink of water. Holme went to the rear of the building to get the water with the man following him. The other man told Murphy to go outside to see if there was any suspicious activity. Murphy did so and while gone but a minute, the two men bound and gagged watchman Holmes. When Murphy returned to tell the policemen he saw nothing suspicious, the two men knocked him down and bound and gagged him. With Holmes lying on the floor next to Murphy, both bound and gagged, the burglars went to work.
A third man appeared at the door of the bank with burglar’s tools and the men went to work prying the doors off uninsured safety deposit boxes. They picked out only the cash, bonds that were easily negotiable, and jewelry. From half past 7 in the evening to 3 o’clock in the morning, the three burglars worked hard at trying to break open the main safe where the bank had stored about $1 million in cash. They men were not able to bust it open and were forced to leave with only $120,000 in cash, bonds, and valuables.
The noise that the men made in opening the safe went unnoticed, as Murphy the watchman, was a shoemaker by day and was in the habit of working in the bank at night. Neighbors upon hearing the noise coming from the bank, assumed it to be Murphy working at his shoemaker’s table.
Both of the watchmen were over sixty years old. The bank suspended Murphy for allowing the thieves to enter after hours. They did not punish Holmes. Murphy had worked for the bank for seven years and felt he was treated unfairly by the suspension, as after all, the other watchman said he knew the men and that is why he left them in. Also, Murphy felt that cashier McConnell earlier in the day should have reported to the local police prescient about the tip on suspicious activity in the area. If McConnell had reported to the Lieutenant at the local police station, he would have found out that the police officers were fake.
Murphy lost $600 of his own money, plus $500 he was holding in his safety box for a woman’s beneficial society, plus $435.55 that belonged to the Wesleyan Burial Ground Association (one of the burial grounds at the old Hanover Street Burial Grounds, now Hetzell’s Playground), plus his job. Next week we’ll see the outcome of the Great Kensington Bank Robbery.
13 November 2008 The Rest is History
Last week we read about the Great Kensington Bank Robbery, where in 1871 thieves stole $120,000 from a local neighborhood bank (Beach Street just below Laurel, or where they propose to build the SugarHouse Casino). Those 1871 dollars would be worth about $2 million today.
The scheme was simple. Thieves disguised as policeman visited the bank at closing and warned the cashier and watchmen that the bank might be targeted that evening by crooks. When the policemen returned to the bank later on and said they were there to help protect the bank, they were let into the bank, then overtook the watchmen, and robbed the bank’s safety deposit boxes, but then failed to open the main safe, which held $1 million cash.
Leads on the robbery were flat. The police were dumbfounded. They had never experienced a robbery were the thieves were disguised as policemen. Investigations turned inwards and they got a break when an actual policeman, Henry Monies, was arrested for a robbery in Norristown, PA. Monies was arrested for public drunkenness a couple of years after the Kensington Bank robbery and found to have some property on his person that tied him to the Norristown robbery. While serving his eight-year sentence at the old Eastern State Penitentiary, Murphy and Holmes, the watchmen at the time of the Kensington robbery, visited Monies and identified him as one of the Kensington Bank robbers. Upon finishing his Norristown robbery charge in 1883, he was promptly arrested and convicted for the Kensington Bank robbery.
Information was obtained that the Blue Shirt Gang, a gang that was headquartered on Locust Street in Center City, carried out the Kensington Bank robbery. The gang had two groups of their own thieves fighting amongst themselves trying to rob the Kensington Bank. The robbery ring had some home grown talent, but also consisted of a number of out of town professionals. The organization was lead by George Adams, alias George Williams, alias “Brockie George.”
Brockie George first appeared in Philadelphia in 1869, by way of New York, but the Blue Shirt Gang predated him. They had been organized since the outbreak of the Civil War (about 1861) and had scattered agents across the United States. In the police in all the principal cities they had those who gave them information and protection and for this protection ten percent of every robbery was deducted before any division was made. Among the robbers a second apportionment was made of five percent and was paid to a treasurer to be used for lawyers or bail when any one of the organization was arrested.
In July of 1872, a store on Chestnut Street above 9th was entered and robbed of $8,000 worth of goods. The police were instructed to search for the robbers. “Brockie George” was suspected and the police picked him up at 10th & Chestnut Streets. During a walk to the station, George broke loose. The police apparently never frisked the suspect and a running gun battle ensued through the streets of Center City between 6th to 8th Streets and Sansom & Walnut Streets. Eight shots in all were discharged but no one was hurt. George was finally arrested a week later, after another escape; he was finally put into Eastern Penitentiary. While in prison “Brockie George” confessed that he was a member of the “Blue Shirt Gang” that robbed the Kensington National Bank. He died while serving time at Eastern State Penitentiary.
Another member of the Blue Shirt Gang was George L. Leslie, alias George H. Howard. Howard is said to have designed the Beneficial Bank robbery where the “swag” was a “round million.” He was associated with almost every major bank robbery in New England and the Midwest. Howard shared in the loot taken from the Kensington Bank robbery, but did not participate in it. He was eventually murdered by two of his “pals” at Yonkers, in May of 1879.
Most of the Blue Shirt Gang was made up of men with Irish surnames. Two men by the name of Jim Brady and John Hobbs were thought to be the two others in the Kensington Bank robbery. Soon after the Kensington Bank Robbery the Blue Shirt Gang was broken up with members forming their own gangs and continuing their life of crime. Eventually, all of them went to jail or were killed.
The Kensington Bank Robbery was a bold robbery, one where the robbers used disguises of policemen. The robbery was kept in the collective memory of the city for at least several generations; often being talked about in the papers as “the most bold robbery” the city had ever seen.
20 November 2008 The Rest is History
Palmer Cemetery a.k.a The Kensington Burial Grounds, is as old as Kensington itself. The cemetery is over 270 years old and over the course of its history there have been many strange stories associated with the place. One of the most interesting occurrences was when a local church tried to usurp the cemetery’s Board of Trustees and take over the cemetery.
The plot of ground where the cemetery sits today was used as a burial ground during the lifetime of Kensington founder Anthony Palmer. Palmer had purchased the old Fairman Estate and mansion house in 1729 and began to carve up the 191 ½ acres, selling off riverfront lots to shipwrights and other interested parties.
Like most town developers in those days, Palmer thought laying aside a plot of ground for a cemetery would be an improvement to his town. Back then it was common to lay aside a common green, a cemetery plot, and perhaps a lot for a school or place of worship.
During the lifetime of Palmer, no place of worship was opened in Kensington. It would be about sixty years before a church was founded in Kensington. While Palmer did found the cemetery during his lifetime, he never did grant the deed of trust for the cemetery to give to the community. Palmer’s daughter carried out her father’s wishes. This deed of trust was given over to a board of trustees that was created. It was made up of six local Kensington men of good standing. Their heirs and associates carried on afterwards.
And so it went for close to sixty years. After the opening of Kensington M.E. ”Old Brick” Church in 1809 (an outgrowth of a Kensington Class that had been meeting for several years) the next church that was founded was First Presbyterian Church of Kensington (Girard Avenue, north of Columbia) which was founded in 1814. It was during First Presbyterian’s founding that the controversy over Palmer Cemetery arose.
First Presbyterian Church was almost complete by July of 1814. Short of monies, one of the trustees of First Presbyterian, John Christ, informed the church that he could borrow money from the trustees of Palmer Cemetery, of which he was on the Board. Christ set about asking for a $1000 loan for the church.
Palmer Cemetery’s board of trustees did not want to make a loan to the First Presbyterian Church, however they would loan the money to John Christ, who in turn could loan the money to the church. For some reason this bothered Christ and he then set about attacking the board of trustees of the cemetery.
During the process of trying to acquire the loan, Christ and another trustee of the church acquired a copy of the deed of trust for Palmer Cemetery. It was the first time that Christ, who had been a trustee of the cemetery for several years, had ever read the deed of trust. It was obvious to Christ that the board of trustees that he was serving on was not fulfilling their duties and in some cases actually breaking the “deed of trust.”
Christ, conferring with the trustees of the First Presbyterian Church of Kensington, thought that since the deed of trust had been broken, that it should be possible to find an heir of Anthony Palmer, have them petition the courts to reclaim the cemetery for breaking the deed of trust, then First Presbyterian could purchase the cemetery from the heir for “the residents of Kensington.”
While this all sounded very altruistic, as if the church had the best thoughts of Kensington’s residents at heart, it did not sit that well with the cemetery’s board of trustees, an organization that was sixty some years old when this upstart church came to Kensington.
While it was true that some of the infractions that the cemetery’s board of trustees were charged with did exist, most folks in the neighborhood tended to overlook them. Some of the board of trustees was accused with not having lived in Kensington for some time. They were also accused of charging people for burials by stating they needed the money for the upkeep of the cemetery. The deed of trust never mentioned charging people and it did mention that the board of trustees must live in Kensington.
First Presbyterian was able to find John David Shaffer, an heir to Anthony Palmer, living at Skippack Township. Shaffer at first was drawn into the attempt to wrestle control of the cemetery from the trustees, but soon seen the folly of it and was advised by a local judge that the case could not be won. Thus ended the first recorded hostile takeover in Kensington’s history.
27 November 2008 The Rest is History
Back on October 18th of 2007, I wrote about the work that archaeologists were doing for PennDOT’s (Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) revamping of Interstate 95 through Fishtown and Port Richmond. At that time the work the archaeologists were conducting was the “initial routine archaeological work.” This month the crew came back out to do the more substantial investigations. During the course of their work they have uncovered the wooden bulkhead walls of the old Aramingo Canal and brick and stone foundations for one of the buildings of the old Cramp Shipyard.
One of the archaeologists, an employee of URS Corporation, one of the world’s largest engineering design firms, is Doug Mooney. Doug is a Philadelphia area archaeologist, who recently ran the archaeological dig of the “President’s House,” the first “White House” in America’s history. This structure, on Market Street just east of 6th Street, was where President Washington lived during his first administration when Philadelphia was still the capital of the country. Mooney, the president of the Philadelphia Archaeology Forum, is also one of the consulting parties who has been critical of some aspects of the SugarHouse archaeological dig.
Previously, Mooney and his fellow archaeologists (including Port Richmond’s Tony McNichols) uncovered what they believed was part of a wall that had been constructed when the canal was being filled up. This current dig is more to the southeast then the test pits and much larger.
On November 20th, the current archaeological dig was opened up for members of the media and neighbors. Those lucky enough to know about it got a real eyeful. The ancient canal, which lays perhaps ten or more feet underground, is unusual for the type of construction that was used to build it and thus the interest by PennDOT to understand it more fully. The wooden bulkhead walls still survive, anchored into a parallel wall of wood, with about a three feet thick wall of dirt in between the canal wall and the wooden supports walls that it is anchored into.
As fast as the archaeologists pump out the water at the bottom of the pit, it seems to fill just as fast. Nearby the pit are two ancient sewer holes. A glance down these holes tells us why the pit keeps filling up with water. The sewer holes reveal ancient vaulted tunnels of red brick. At the bottom of these flows the remnants of Gunnar’s Run, the old creek that still runs under Aramingo Avenue. The creek was named for Gunnar Rambo, one of the original Swedish settlers of Shackamaxon in the 17th Century.
The Gunner’s Run Improvement Company, a company founded in 1847 by a group of local Fishtown, Kensington, and Port Richmond businessmen, built the Aramingo Canal. The canal started at roughly the foot of Dyott Street at the Delaware River then curved northwestward, and then at about York Street it went northward up the current course of Aramingo Avenue. It’s the reason that Aramingo Avenue looks the way it does from York Street to Lehigh Avenue. The canal then turned slightly and followed the course of Aramingo Avenue up to at least Tioga Street (I previously reported it went up to Lehigh only).
In the 19th Century you would have had various manufactories lining the canal’s path and it made it easy for businesses to get their products to market, or to receive raw materials for the making of the finished products. This was during a time before the age of trucks, and while railroads were around, they were not yet as popular as they would become.
The amount of traffic on the canal was much lower then the founders expected. As well, some of the smaller investors never followed up with their capital. The adventure failed soon after, but the old canal sat until the end of the 19th Century when finally the city, after numerous complaints about the health problems by people living near the canal, filled it in and created present day Aramingo Avenue.
Ridding the neighborhood of Aramingo Canal was considered a “stupendous engineering operation.” A newspaper article of 1899 stated that it would “completely alter the entire aspect of this interesting old region.” The writer goes on to state, “The neighborhood is rich in memories and historic associations, and has always maintained its old traditions tenaciously, and as a result innovations have always been regarded with suspicion and have made progress but slowly.”
As Fishtowners, we are lucky to be having so much archaeological work being done in the neighborhood; it’s an ideal time to learn about our community’s past.
4 December 2008 The Rest is History
Recently I received an email from a fellow in England, who was researching the family of Anthony Palmer. He was a Palmer and wanted to see if Anthony Palmer, the founder of Kensington, could be tied into his own family of Palmer. I never have been able to tie Kensington’s founder to his family in England, but have plenty of suspicions who it might be, that being the family of Sir Anthony Palmer, a Knight of the Bath, from County Kent, who married Margaret Digges, a sister and aunt to early officials of the Virginia colony.
I have only been able thus far to document the father of Kensington’s founder, who was also named Anthony Palmer. My suspicions on Sir Anthony Palmer are due to the fact that he had a second son named Anthony Palmer, who disappears in the British records. Sir Anthony’s first son, Dudley Palmer, inherited all of his father’s wealth, leaving the second son, Anthony, to fend for himself. Evidence thus far seems to show that he possibly went to Barbados in the last quarter of the 17th Century to make his life.
Seventeenth-century Barbados was a land of immense opportunity for Englishmen. Barbados had become the jewel of the sugar islands and a source of great wealth. The Englishmen who emigrated to Barbados came with one thought in mind: to attain wealth. Minor nobles, the second sons of nobles and the ever-adventurous merchants came to Barbados to seek their fortune. One of these families was headed by Anthony Palmer, Senior, a middling planter/merchant, father of Anthony Palmer, the founder of today’s Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington.
Records show that an Anthony Palmer Sr. was first recorded in Barbados by the year 1677. He was elected a constable in the vestry of St. John's Parish. Because baptismal records for Barbados in this period are not complete, it is not clear whether Palmer’s son was born in Barbados. In the absence of a baptismal record, and because there is no record of him or his father appearing any earlier than 1677, it may be safe to conclude that Anthony Palmer Jr. (the founder of Kensington) was born outside of Barbados, most likely in England. Since Palmer Jr. was likely to have born elsewhere, and it is said that he was born about 1673, it appears that senior Palmer did not arrive in Barbados with the intention of settling down until some time between 1674 and 1677.
The quest for a livelihood as a captain of a ship or a merchant most likely brought the elder Palmer to Barbados earlier than the 1674 to 1677 period. He may very well have traded in the island before settling. According to the Barbados Census of 1680, Palmer Sr. was an ensign in the militia and could have come to Barbados for military purposes; unfortunately not enough evidence exists to exclude any possibility.
The Barbados Census of 1679-80 is the most informative census of any British colony in the seventeenth century or for that matter than any census before the 1770's. The census lists all propertied inhabitants of the island along with such statistics as the number of acres, indentured servants, and slaves owned. There is also information on the Barbados militia.
Anthony Palmer Sr. is identified as a landowner in the parish of St. John. He is listed as owning 39 1/2 acres of land and had the luxury of the labor of 4 indentured servants. The cost for these servants was 10 to 13 pounds apiece with their period of indenture lasting roughly 6 years. Palmer rounded out his holdings with the ownership of 40 slaves. These slaves brought an average price of 15 to 16 pounds in the mid 1680's. Palmer's worth in ownership of labor amounted to 650 to 700 pounds. When added to the value of his land his approximate worth (land, indentures & slaves only) was at least 850 to 900 pounds.
This monetary figure placed Palmer in the middle class of Barbados society. Palmer being in the middle class of Barbados society and well above the small planters and freeholders was still far off from breaking into the big planter class.
The ability of middling planters like Palmer to expand their acreage was thwarted by the large planters and Palmer’s chances to move up in society were substantially blocked as well. Conflicts such as these made entrepreneurial men emigrate to North America and that is just what the junior Anthony Palmer did when he went to Philadelphia about the year 1704. Later columns will pick up the story of Kensington’s founder and why I believe he is related to Sir Anthony Palmer of County Kent, England.
11 December 2008 The Rest is History
As stated in last week’s column, I believe that Kensington’s founder Anthony Palmer is a descendant of Sir Anthony Palmer, of County Kent, England. This theory is built (for now) only on circumstantial evidence, but when compiled, makes a compelling argument.
For Kensington’s founder Anthony Palmer (1664-1749), the ability to advance in society in Barbados was difficult. Land, when it was available, was kept in the control of the large planters. These men also controlled the government institutions of Barbados. Mainly acting as absentee landlords based in England, these large planters (many with English peerages) were not about to give up their grasp on Barbados, so Palmer acted on the only choice open to him, to immigrate to the colonies of North America (in his case Pennsylvania).
Sir Anthony Palmer (1567-1630), the suspected grandfather of Kensington’s founder, married in 1614 as his second wife Margaret Digges (1586-1619), the sister of Sir Dudley Digges (1583-1638), of Chilham Castle, County Kent, England. Sir Dudley and Sir Anthony were Knights of the Bath, knighted at the coronation of King James I. Digges and Palmer were also involved in the early founding of Virginia through the Virginia Company, the stock company set up for that purpose in the early 17th Century.
Sir Anthony Palmer and his wife had three children; John Palmer who died young, Dudley Palmer, named to honor his distinguished uncle, and a third son named Anthony Palmer, born about 1618. Dudley Palmer inherited all of his father’s wealth and estates. This third son of Sir Anthony, while not in the poor house, was presumably forced to seek his own fortune elsewhere due to his brother Dudley receiving the lion’s share of their father’s wealth.
After a number of years in Barbados, Anthony Palmer (Kensington’s founder), decided to come to Pennsylvania about the year 1704. When he arrived in Pennsylvania he was immediately accepted onto the Pennsylvania Council, the highest governing body of William Penn’s colony of Pennsylvania. How could Palmer have been so readily accepted, but without some sort of letter of introduction? Kensington’s founder also married one of his daughters to Alexander Henry Keith, Esq., son and heir-apparent of Sir William Keith, of Ludquhairn, Baronet. Palmer had aligned himself with Sir William during Keith’s days as Pennsylvania’s governor. This would seem to show that Palmer was of the same class distinction as Sir William and had the ability to marry his daughter into a peerage and govern colonies.
Sir Dudley Digges’ son Edward Digges (1621-1675) became the governor of the Virginia Colony (1656-1658) and his son was the Hon. Dudley Digges (1665-1710). A will for John Hunt that was probated in Virginia in 1706, names Anthony Palmer, Kensington’s founder, as his executive in Pennsylvania. This John Hunt is factually recorded to be a relative of Kensington’s founder. This same probate record also has the Hon. Dudley Digges as Hunt’s executor in Virginia. This Hon. Dudley Digges is the grandnephew of Sir Anthony Palmer (Sir Dudley Digges grandson). While this does not tie Kensington’s founder to Sir Anthony Palmer legally, coupled with the above-mentioned evidence, it helps to build the case.
Sir Dudley Digges was the same generation as Sir Anthony Palmer. Sir Dudley’s son Edward, the governor of Virginia, was the same generation as Sir Anthony’s son Anthony, whose brother Dudley inherited their father’s wealth. Sir Dudley’s grandson, the Hon. Dudley Digges, would have been the same generation as Kensington’s founder Anthony Palmer, thus the ages and generation charts appear to match for Kensington’s founder Anthony Palmer, to be the grandson of Sir Anthony Palmer. Kensington’s founder was born in 1664, when Sir Anthony Palmer’s son Anthony would have been only 46 years old.
It is my belief that Sir Anthony Palmer’s son of the same name, is the father of Kensington’s founder Anthony Palmer, who, due to the primogeniture laws in effect in England in his day, was forced to immigrate to Barbados to seek his own fortune, then this Anthony’s son, a successful merchant, immigrated to Pennsylvania where because of his social status, was accepted immediately onto the Pennsylvania Council, married his daughter into a peerage, founded the town of Kensington, and at one point (1747-48) became the acting governor of the Pennsylvania colony.
This sort of upward mobility was highly unlikely in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries and thus in order to achieve what he did during his lifetime, Anthony Palmer, Kensington’s founder, would have had to have started at a higher level of society, then the recorded middling planter status of the Barbados Census of 1679-80.
As a side note, Sir Anthony Palmer’s second wife, Margaret Digges, had as her step- father Thomas Russell, one of the witnesses to William Shakespeare’s will.
18 December 2008 The Rest is History
The last couple of weeks I wrote about the ancestry of Anthony Palmer, Kensington’s founder. This week we will take a look at Anthony Palmer youthful years and his beginnings as a merchant.
Palmer is recorded as being in Barbados as early as June of 1678. We can only speculate about his life as a youth. With some reading of Barbados history and a little imagination, we can piece together the kind of life Anthony Palmer may have led in his earlier years.
His education would likely have been limited to his home with a tutor, since his family lived in a rural Barbados parish. It is also possible that he was sent to England for his schooling. The first college in Barbados was not founded until 1702, when Palmer would have been far beyond the college age.
Since most of the arable land on Barbados was given over to sugar production and almost all provisions had to be imported, Barbados was full of merchant traders and this was the profession that Palmer entered. Food and building supplies and items necessary for sugar production were all imported from North America or England. Barbados had a long tradition of trading with the North American colonies. In the period of the 1640's when England was torn by civil war, the North Americans needed other outlets for their goods and the Barbadians came to depend on the northern colonies for the bulk of her supplies. Massachusetts had been the earliest northern colony to trade with the island. South Carolina had been established by a number of large Barbados planters in the late 17th century and there was a good deal of trade between these places. Virginia and Pennsylvania were also large providers to the Barbados economy.
This trading by Barbadians led to many becoming ship owners themselves. The people who immigrated out of Barbados to the North American colonies became important connections for these Barbadian merchants. Anthony Palmer was one such merchant with connections in the colony of Pennsylvania. But what type of merchant was he? The type of merchant can tell us the status of the individual in the business world.
The merchants of Barbados were classified in four ways. The first was both merchant and planter, but primarily a planter. This type of merchant was self-sufficient and relied on his own agriculture for export, importing anything he needed. The second class were "merchants pure and simple." These were traders who bought and sold what ever was getting the best price. Their livelihood depended on the market since they were not large landowners. Thirdly, there were agents or factors of England or other foreigners doing business on the island. They were supported by foreign investors and could make a profitable living as long as the backers supported them. Lastly were the "Jews," who were put into a class by themselves, discriminated against and often accused of smuggling and profiting by underselling.
We know that Anthony Palmer was not Jewish and it is unlikely that he was a foreign factor. His father's property would not have been large enough (only 39 ½ acres) to be a primary planter, so in all likelihood Palmer was a merchant "pure and simple" plying the trade between the West Indies and North America.
In the early 1690's Palmer moved from Barbados’ St. John’s Parish into the city Bridgetown, the main port for the island. Bridgetown had vast storehouses to handle the volume of commodities coming in and out of the island. Retailing and wholesaling were not yet differentiated and small rooms were set aside to handle the retail aspects of the trade. The warehouses also contained the merchant’s counting houses with their clerks and apprentices conducting the everyday business. Almost daily, hogsheads of tobacco, barrels of rum, bags and chests of indigo, cocoa, cotton, ginger, hides and other commodities would be brought to the storehouses by the laborers of the merchants or the plantation owners’ slaves. Here the goods would be checked, weighed, measured and finally stored away to await ships to take them to North America, other West Indian islands or to England and Europe.
Although Palmer was doing well as a merchant and was gradually becoming wealthy, there was still a great difference in power between large and middling classes. Palmer’s ability to improve his standing in society on a more than monetary scale was blocked by the large planters’ control of Barbados. Palmer had the same struggle as his father did when he attempted to expand his landholdings. But all was not bleak for Palmer, his business of trade was turning out successfully and he would soon immigrate to Pennsylvania.
25 December 2008 The Rest is History
We saw over the last three weeks that Kensington’s founder, Anthony Palmer, was possibly the grandson of Sir Anthony Palmer, of County Kent, England. We also saw that Sir Anthony’s son of the same name, due to primogeniture laws, was probably forced to set out for Barbados sometime in the last half of the 17th Century to seek his fortune. We also found that Kensington’s founder, after being raised as a merchant by his father, established himself as a merchant at Bridgetown, Barbados, trading with the North American colonies in the last couple of decades of the 17th Century and the first decade of the 18th Century. Eventually, Kensington’s founder realized, like many immigrants today, that the American colonies had more opportunities and he immigrated to Pennsylvania.
The availability of large tracts of land was a major reason for people to come to North America. Carolina was founded by Barbadians. Many middling planters as well as large ones were able to acquire tremendous amounts of land. A number of seemingly undistinguished Barbadian's rose to be leading members of the Carolina Government and business world. These were positions which would have been unattainable had they stayed in Barbados. On an island like Barbados, Palmer’s expansionist options were limited. While accumulating wealth Palmer was unable to acquire more land. If he wanted to expand his landholdings as his fellow Barbadians were doing in Carolina, his only option was emigration.
The tract of land, which Palmer first purchased in Pennsylvania was owned by a fellow Barbadian, Captain George Lillington. In 1704 Palmer paid Lillington 500 Barbados pounds for the property. Captain Lillington acquired the property between the period of June 1697 and October 1699. In this three year period Lillington purchased, from several Swedes (descendants of the original Swedish colonists) four continuous tracts of land situated on the West side of the Delaware River. The property was located several miles north of the original city of Philadelphia in an area then known as "Shackamaxon.” The entire tract when combined amounted to 582 acres. This property that Palmer bought from Lillington was quite substantial. Palmer never would have been able to acquire an estate this large in Barbados. Besides the cost factor, such large tracts of land were simply not available. This estate was the famous “Hope Farm” estate, which later evolved into today’s Port Richmond.
Lillington never attempted to settle this Pennsylvania property. In fact there are no signs of him doing any improvements. He was a large planter in Barbados and the land purchase was simply speculation for him. Besides his land speculation in North America, Lillington was a major participant in the activities of Barbados as a captain in the militia and a member of the Barbados Council. It was in these positions that Lillington came under the most severe attack of his life.
In 1703 while a member of council, Lillington was dissatisfied that the Governor of Barbados was requiring the militia to be called up on a more than regular basis. As a captain in the militia this call up was a great inconvenience for Lillington. A dispute arose over the incident and Governor Granville suspended Lillington and three other assemblymen when they attempted to secede from the assembly and form a new government.
Soon after the group's suspensions there was an attempted assassination of the Governor. George Lillington was arrested for the crime. Lillington was originally found guilty and made to pay a 2,000 pound fine and to serve time in prison. However, as tempers died down the charges were dismissed in a way that maintained the dignity of all parties.
It was at exactly this time that Palmer bought the land in Pennsylvania from Lillington. It may very well have been Palmer’s 500 Barbados pounds that went towards the payment of Lillington's fine which he had already paid before the charges were dropped. Everything seems to have turned out well for Lillington. As President of the Barbados Council he became the acting-governor of Barbados in 1710, before dying in 1713.
This event highlights the difference in status between Lillington and Palmer. Lillington was a large planter in Barbados, a position Palmer could not achieve. But, since Palmer bought out Lillington's holdings in Pennsylvania and emigrated, he was able to rise above his socio-economic status in Barbados. Once in Pennsylvania, Palmer continued to rise in society and like Lillington in Barbados, became a leading member of Pennsylvania’s Provincial Council, then its President. Eventually Palmer became the Acting-Governor of his adopted colony, just as Lillington had done in Barbados. For Anthony Palmer immigration proved the key to his success.