page_title: Quincy, Massachusetts
section_title: Post-Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Quincy, Massachusetts / History / Post-Revolution
caption_attribution_description: English: "Quincy, Massachusetts" oil on canvas, by the American artist Frederick Childe Hassam.
context_page_description: Quincy 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 2010 was 92,271, making it the eighth-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 and Boston 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.
context_section_description: 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.
  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.
  Quincy was also an aviation pioneer thanks to Dennison Field. Located in the Squantum section of town 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 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 Parks and Recreation, who started the "Koch Club" sports organization for kids and had an annual parade with flags.
caption: Quincy, Massachusetts, oil on canvas, Childe Hassam, 1892
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