Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Penn arrived on the 27th of October 1682, when his ship Welcome reached the province. The indigenous tribe that owned the land were the Okehockings, and the original name of the settlement was Mecoponaca.
John Roach opened the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works in 1871 through the purchase of the Reaney, Son & Archbold shipyard. For the first 15 years of operation, it became the largest and most productive shipyard in the United States.
A series of almost nightly protests brought chaos to Chester starting in April 1964, leading to over 600 arrests within a two-month period. Civil rights leaders such as Gloria Richardson, Malcolm X, and Dick Gregory came to support the demonstrations led by George Raymond and Stanley Branche.
An intense fire broke out at Wade Dump in 1978, burning for several days and causing multi-colored smoke that injured 43 firemen. The location was declared a Superfund cleanup site in 1981 before being deemed safe and removed from the national priorities list in 1989.
John J. McClure took over the Republican political machine in 1907 and served as its boss until his death in 1965. With the exception of 1904 and 1905, this machine controlled Chester politics for over a century until Barbara Bohannan-Sheppard became the first non-machine mayor in 1992.
Pennsylvania declared Chester a financially distressed municipality in 1995, and a fiscal emergency was declared in 2020. Chester became the 31st city in the United States to declare bankruptcy in 2022.