Before European settlers arrived, Kingston was within the tribal homeland of the
Wampanoag people. Several years before the
Mayflower had landed in Plymouth, during the Native American epidemic of 1616 to 1619, the Wampanoag population was severely damaged from a rapidly spreading
pandemics due to earlier contacts with
Europeans. Several ancient
Native American burial sites have been located within the borders of Kingston. Originally part of Plymouth, Kingston was first settled by Europeans shortly after the landing of the
Pilgrims at
Plymouth Rock in 1620. It was settled once more in 1635. During 1675, several bloody battles during
King Philip's War are believed to have occurred within Kingston's borders and the residence of
Governor Bradford, which is now part of Kingston, was raided by Wampanoag warriors. In 1685, the area was placed within the boundaries of
Plymouth County and for a brief time, between 1686 and 1689, the borders of Kingston were within the
Dominion of New England. Kingston was first established as Plymouth's northern precinct in 1717 upon the creation of First Parish Kingston, now a
Unitarian Universalist church in the town's center. Kingston was incorporated as a distinct town on June 16, 1726, following a tax dispute between the residents of north and south Plymouth, when the parish was known as the upper class portion of Plymouth. Kingston's borders were carved out of neighboring towns
Plymouth,
Duxbury,
Plympton and
Pembroke, all of which had been incorporated before Kingston. Kingston is home to the longest continuously run
boat yard in
North America, now named the Jones River Landing. The
American Revolutionary War era
brig,
USS Independence, was built by Kingston
shipbuilders on the
Jones River and has emerged as a town icon, featured on the Kingston town seal. The tenure of
Independence in the
Massachusetts Navy was short, however; the ship was captured in battle off the coast of
Nova Scotia by
HMS Hope and
HMS Nancy. In the early-to-middle 19th century, Kingston flourished as a center for shipbuilding, as well as
ice harvesting. Jones River Pond, the largest body of freshwater in town, was used during the long
New England winters to harvest ice. The harvested product was then shipped throughout the world. Jones River Pond was even renamed to
Silver Lake for marketing purposes during the height of the ice harvesting export industry, and retains the name today. Kingston is also home to the first co-op store in North America, which was closed when the Silver Lake Post Office shuttered operations in 1954. On April 14, 1857, Kingston annexed a small part of Duxbury. It would be the last addition to the town's borders to date. In the 1950s Kingston was transformed from a small rural town into an extension of the
Boston metropolitan area when
Massachusetts Route 3 was constructed, connecting Boston to
Cape Cod, with two exits in Kingston (and a third exit immediately over the town line in
Duxbury). Kingston saw its largest population growth in the 1990s when the
Old Colony Railroad was reopened as a
commuter rail line, connecting once-rural Kingston with
Boston, making Kingston an even more viable place for commuters to live. More recently, Kingston has seen the construction of four industrial-sized
wind turbines, located along Route 3. ==Geography==