Edmonston's mayor in 1927 was Kinjiro Matsudaira, the grandson of a Japanese feudal lord. His election received attention in the Philadelphia press at the time with the somewhat inaccurate lead, "Japanese Elected Mayor of American City for the First Time in History." His father, Tadaatsu, came to the United States in 1872 to study and stayed to marry an American woman and pursue a distinguished career in civil engineering. Kinjiro Matsudaira, born in Pennsylvania in 1885, was elected Mayor of Edmonston for a second time in 1943, during World War II.