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Quincy MA

Quincy, Massachusetts
City
City of Quincy
Downtown Quincy in 2018
Flag Seal
Nickname(s):  “City of Presidents”
Motto(s):  “Manet“  (Latin) “It Remains”
Location of Quincy in Norfolk County, Massachusetts
Quincy Location in the United States
Coordinates: 42°15′N 71°0′W / 42.250°N 71.000°W / 42.250; -71.000Coordinates: 42°15′N 71°0′W / 42.250°N 71.000°W / 42.250; -71.000
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Norfolk
Region	New England
Settled	1625
Incorporated (town)	1792
Incorporated (city)	1888
Named for	John Quincy
Government
• Type	Mayor–council
• Mayor	Thomas P. Koch
• City Council	Ward 2: Brad L. Croall (President) At-Large: Anne M. Mahoney At-Large: Noel DiBona At-Large: Nina Liang Ward 1: David F. McCarthy Ward 3: Ian C. Cain Ward 4: Brian Palmucci Ward 5: Kirsten L. Hughes Ward 6: William Harris
Area
• Total	26.91 sq mi (69.69 km2)
• Land	16.57 sq mi (42.92 km2)
• Water	10.33 sq mi (26.77 km2)
Elevation	30 ft (9 m)
Highest elevation	517 ft (158 m)
Lowest elevation	0 ft (0 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	101,636
• Density	6,133.74/sq mi (2,368.03/km2)
Time zone	UTC−5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−4 (Eastern)
ZIP Code	02169, 02170, 02171
Area code(s)	617 and 857
FIPS code	25-55745
GNIS feature ID	0617701
Website	www.quincyma.gov

Quincy ( KWIN-zee) is a U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston’s immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 101,636, making it the seventh-largest city in the state. Known as the “City of Presidents”, Quincy is the birthplace of two U.S. presidents—John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams—as well as John Hancock, a President of the Continental Congress and the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, as well as being the first and third Governor of Massachusetts.

First settled in 1625, Quincy was briefly part of Dorchester before becoming the north precinct of Braintree in 1640. In 1792, Quincy was split off from Braintree; the new town was named after Colonel John Quincy, maternal grandfather of Abigail Adams and after whom John Quincy Adams was also named. Quincy became a city in 1888.

For more than a century, Quincy was home to a thriving granite industry; the city was also the site of the Granite Railway, the United States’ first commercial railroad. Shipbuilding at the Fore River Shipyard was another key part of the city’s economy. In the 20th century, both Howard Johnson’s and Dunkin’ Donuts were founded in the city.

History

Colonial Period to the Revolution

Massachusett sachem Chickatawbut had his seat on a hill called Moswetuset Hummock prior to the settlement of the area by English colonists, situated east of the mouth of the Neponset River near what is now called Squantum. It was visited in 1621 by Plymouth Colony commander Myles Standish and Squanto, a native guide. Four years later, a party led by Captain Wollaston established a post on a low hill near the south shore of Quincy Bay east of present-day Black’s Creek. The settlers found the area suitable for farming, as Chickatawbut and his group had cleared much of the land of trees. (The Indians used the name Passonagessit (“Little Neck of Land”) for the area.) This settlement was named Mount Wollaston in honor of the leader, who left the area soon after 1625, bound for Virginia. The Wollaston neighborhood in Quincy still retains Captain Wollaston’s name.

Upon the departure of Wollaston, Thomas Morton took over leadership of the post. Morton’s history of conflict with the Plymouth settlement and his free-thinking ideals antagonized the Plymouth settlement, who maligned the colony and accused it of debauchery with Indian women and drunkenness. Morton renamed the settlement Ma-re-Mount (“Hill by the Sea”) and later wrote that the conservative separatists of Plymouth Colony to the south were “threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount”, in reference to the fact that they disapproved of his libertine practices. In 1627, Morton was arrested by Standish for violating the code of conduct in a way harmful to the colony. He was sent back to England, only to return and be arrested by Puritans the next year. The area of Quincy now called Merrymount is located on the site of the original English settlement of 1625 and takes its name from the punning name given by Morton.

The area was first incorporated as part of Dorchester in 1630 and was briefly annexed by Boston in 1634. The area became Braintree in 1640, bordered along the coast of Massachusetts Bay by Dorchester to the north and Weymouth to the east. Beginning in 1708, the modern border of Quincy first took shape as the North Precinct of Braintree.

Post-Revolution

Following the American Revolution, Quincy was officially incorporated as a separate town named for Col. John Quincy in 1792, and was made a city in 1888. In 1845 the Old Colony Railroad opened; the Massachusetts Historical Commission stated that the railroad was “the beginning of a trend toward suburbanization”. Quincy became as accessible to Boston as was Charlestown. The first suburban land company, Bellevue Land Co., had been organized in northern Quincy in 1870. Quincy’s population grew by over 50 percent during the 1920s.

Among the city’s several firsts was the Granite Railway, the first commercial railroad in the United States. It was constructed in 1826 to carry granite from a Quincy quarry to the Neponset River in Milton so that the stone could then be taken by boat to erect the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Quincy granite became famous throughout the nation, and stonecutting became the city’s principal economic activity. Quincy was also home to the first iron furnace in the United States, the John Winthrop Jr. Iron Furnace Site (also known as Braintree Furnace), from 1644 to 1653.

In the 1870s, the city gave its name to the Quincy Method, an influential approach to education developed by Francis W. Parker while he served as Quincy’s superintendent of schools. Parker, an early proponent of progressive education, put his ideas into practice in the city’s underperforming schools; four years later, a state survey found that Quincy’s students were excelling. Many of Quincy’s teachers were recruited by districts in other states, spreading the Quincy method beyond Massachusetts to New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Florida, Minnesota, and other places.

Quincy was additionally important as a shipbuilding center. Sailing ships were built in Quincy for many years, including the only seven-masted schooner ever built, Thomas W. Lawson. The Fore River area became a shipbuilding center in the 1880s; founded by Thomas A. Watson, who became wealthy as assistant to Alexander Graham Bell in developing the telephone, many famous warships were built at the Fore River Shipyard. Amongst these were the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2); the battleships USS Massachusetts (BB-59), now preserved as a museum ship at Battleship Cove in Massachusetts, and USS Nevada (BB-36); and USS Salem (CA-139), the world’s last all-gun heavy warship, which is still preserved at Fore River as the main exhibit of the United States Naval Shipbuilding Museum. John J. Kilroy, reputed originator of the famous Kilroy was here graffiti, was a rivet inspector at Fore River.