Anthony Palmer, Founder of Kensington

The neighborhood of Kensington, now one of Philadelphia's most storied districts, owes its founding to a merchant-turned-politician named Anthony Palmer. Palmer arrived in Philadelphia in seventeen oh five and built a career in trade and colonial law, rising through the provincial council and the judiciary. In the seventeen thirties he laid out the community of Kensington on land north of the city along the Delaware River.

He served as acting governor of Pennsylvania in seventeen forty-eight and seventeen forty-nine, and in that role he worked alongside Benjamin Franklin to secure funding for coastal defenses against French and Spanish privateers threatening the colony. Palmer died in seventeen forty-nine, at a very advanced age. Kensington went on to become a dense industrial and working-class neighborhood that shaped Philadelphia's history for the next two and a half centuries.