Chester

The old Chester Courthouse was built in 1724 in Chester, to serve as the courthouse for Chester County, Pennsylvania. Chester County was one of the... first three counties in the Province of Pennsylvania set up by William Penn. About 1790 the county seat was moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania and the Chester Courthouse no longer served as the county courthouse. A few years later, the area around Chester was separated from Chester County and formed into Delaware County, Pennsylvania and the Chester Courthouse became the courthouse for Delaware County. In 1850 the county seat was again moved - this time to Media and Chester Courthouse served as City Hall for the city of Chester.
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Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway... stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Stormy Weather", "Taking a Chance on Love", "Heat Wave", "Supper Time", "Am I Blue?", and "Cabin in the Sky", as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896, as a result of the rape of her teenaged mother, Louise Anderson by John Waters, a pianist and family acquaintance from a mixed-race middle-class background, who played no role in raising Ethel. Ethel Waters was raised in poverty and never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her difficult childhood, "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family.
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Frances Joan "Fran" Brill is an American actress and puppeteer, best known for her roles on Sesame Street and playing Lily Marvin in the Frank Oz... film, What About Bob?. Brill was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Linette and Joseph M. Brill. Her father was a physician. She is a graduate of Boston University. She began her career in theater, making her Broadway debut in the 1969 play Red, White and Maddox. Her other theatrical roles include leads at the Roundabout Theatre, Manhattan Theater Club, Playwrights Horizons and many regional theaters including the Long Wharf, Yale Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, the Mark Taper Forum and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has been nominated twice for a Drama Desk Award, for What Every Woman Knows and for Knuckle , respectively. From 1974-1975, Brill played Fran Bachman on NBC's daytime drama How to Survive a Marriage. Her character struggled with sudden widowhood, and Brill received over a thousand condolence letters. Brill was also featured in episodes of The Guiding Light, All My Children, The Edge of Night, Hyde in Hollywood, Lip Service and Kate and Allie.
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Alex North was an American composer who wrote the first jazz-based film score and one of the first modernist scores written in Hollywood . Born... Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania to Russian Jewish parents, North was an original composer probably even by the classical music standards of the day. However, he managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody". Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone. North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman . His best-known film scores include The Rainmaker , Spartacus , The Misfits ,The Children's Hour Cleopatra , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , The Devil's Brigade , and Dragonslayer .
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Matthew Ryan is an American alternative country singer-songwriter. Ryan has also collaborated with Neilson Hubbard to form the band Strays Don't... Sleep. Ryan's voice has been described as a "hushed rasp, with words catching like vows destined to be broken - one of modern music's most potent whispers." Like the Jayhawks, Son Volt and other artists from the late 1990s alternative country scene, Ryan has a dedicated following but only limited commercial success. Matthew Ryan arrived on the music scene in 1997 with ''Mayday'', his first record. The album was released on A&M and reflected the influences of Tom Waits, the Waterboys, and Bruce Springsteen. A video was made for "Guilty". The album is considered a classic of the genre. East Autumn Grin, Ryan's second record, was released in 2000. The album failed to become the commercial success the label had hoped, and Ryan was dropped. After being dropped by Interscope Records Ryan started working on demo material with David Henry. The material was stark and bare, Concussion was recorded and mixed in 8 days with Richard McLaurin.
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Deron John Miller is mostly known for being the frontman/guitarist for CKY from 1998 until 2011. He is currently the lead singer, guitarist and... songwriter for World Under Blood. One day in 1994, Deron, was in Algebra class where he met future bandmate Jess Margera. The two got along right away from sharing a sense of humor no one else related to. Deron was in the process of breaking up with his band This End Up, and Jess had told Deron that he could play drums. So with the current circumstances, Deron went to Jess's House and the two had a jamming session. At first Deron thought Jess lacked skill at drumming. But Deron gave Jess another chance and the two jammed again and formed the band Foreign Objects. After releasing a 5-Track EP, Deron and Jess decided to start a new, more commercial band called oiL. The band went to a studio to record a demo when they met Chad I. Ginsburg in GroundHog Studios in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. After hearing a demo of Disengage The Simulator from the band Chad immediately wanted to be part of the band having recently left his band Rudy + Blitz.
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Joe Pyne was an American radio and television talk show host, who pioneered the confrontational style in which the host advocates a viewpoint and... argues with guests and audience members. He was an influence on other major talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Wally George, Alan Burke, Morton Downey, Jr., Bob Grant, and Michael Savage. Joseph Pyne was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. His father, Edward Pyne, was a bricklayer; his mother, Catherine, was a housewife. Pyne graduated from Chester High School in 1942, and immediately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He saw combat in the South Pacific, where he earned three battle stars. In 1943, during a Japanese bombing attack, he was wounded in the left knee. In 1955, he lost the lower part of that leg due to a rare form of cancer. Discharged from the Marines at the end of World War II, Pyne attended a local drama school to correct a speech impediment. While studying there, he decided to try radio. He worked briefly in Lumberton, North Carolina, before he was hired at a new station, WPWA, in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania. However, he argued with the owner and was fired.
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