Pre-Colonial Period to the Revolution The road that eventually became the Old Coast Road from Boston to
Plymouth, going through Quincy and Braintree, started out as a Native American trail.
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
Richard 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. 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 was first incorporated as part of
Dorchester in 1630; it 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. It was made a city in 1888. Quincy, Massachusetts, is the only one of the 17 U.S. cities named "
Quincy" whose residents pronounce the name as "KWIN-zee" rather than "KWIN-see". 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. , 1892 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 ; the
battleships , now preserved as a
museum ship at
Battleship Cove in Massachusetts, and ; and , 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.
James J. Kilroy, reputed originator of the famous
Kilroy was here graffiti, was a rivet inspector at the Fore River Shipyard. Quincy was also an
aviation pioneer thanks to Dennison Field. Located in
Squantum, it was one of the world's first airports and was partially developed by
Amelia Earhart. In 1910, it was the site of the
Harvard Aero Meet, the second air show in America. It was later leased to the
Navy for an airfield, and served as a reserve
Squantum Naval Air Station into the 1950s. The
Army has also long maintained a presence in the city, with the
Massachusetts Army National Guard occupying the Kelley Armory in Wollaston; from 1971 to 1976 it served as headquarters for the
187th Infantry Brigade. The
Howard Johnson's and
Dunkin' Donuts restaurant chains were both founded in Quincy.
Celtic punk band
Dropkick Murphys got its start in the city's
Wollaston neighborhood in 1996. Quincy is also home to the United States' longest-running
Flag Day parade, a tradition that began in 1952 under Richard Koch, a former director of City Parks and Recreation, who started the "Koch Club" sports organization for kids and held an annual parade with flags. == Geography ==