The Knickerbocker magazine for January 1843 contains his poem Greenwood Cemetery,, credited to his favorite pseudonym, Julian Cramer.

That same year, Chester published his first volume of poetry, Greenwood Cemetery and Other Poems, in New York and Boston.

[1] During several sessions of Congress, Chester visited Washington D.C. as a corresponding editor and as an assistant clerk in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Various causes prevented Chester from succeeding in his undertaking, but he settled in London and made it his residence till his death.

[2] For a time, he kept up his connection with the American newspaper press and for about three years furnished a weekly letter from London to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

However, the U.S. Federal Government gave him a commission to research the British genealogical records on American families.

In 1862, Chester obtained free access to Doctors' Commons, a British legal society, as a literary inquirer to examine all the wills that had been recorded there prior to 1700, and to make copies of those that applied to American families.

Chester had wanted to publish a monograph on the family tree of President George Washington.

However, Chester was never able to establish which English emigrant was the founder of the American branch of the Washington family, so the monograph was never completed.

[2] In 1877, in recognition of Chester's genealogical research, Columbia University granted him the honorary degree of LL.D.

Chester's major work in London was the editing and annotating of The Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Registers of the Collegiate Church or Abbey of St. Peter, Westminster, dedicated to Queen Victoria.

Chester's literary executor, George Edward Cokayne, Norroy King of Arms, sold the manuscript of the Matriculations at the University of Oxford for £1,500, and five volumes of Marriage Allegations in the Bishop of London's Register, &c., for £500 to Leonard Lawrie Hartley.