Quincy, Massachusetts
A Short History of Quincy
From a Massachusett village on the bay, to a scandalous Maypole colony, to the birthplace of two presidents and the granite that built a nation’s monuments.
Before the City
Long before any town existed, the shore of what is now Quincy was home to the Massachusett people, who fished the bay and farmed the coastal land near Moswetuset Hummock, the small hill whose name many trace to the word Massachusetts itself. Their presence shaped the land the colonists would later claim, and their name endures on the state.
Merrymount and the Maypole
In the 1620s a trader named Thomas Morton took over a small settlement on a hill in present-day Quincy and renamed it Merrymount. Morton scandalized the Pilgrims at nearby Plymouth by raising a tall Maypole, trading guns to the Massachusett, and generally enjoying himself. Plymouth sent Myles Standish to arrest him and ship him back to England. It was one of the first culture clashes in New England, and Quincy was the stage.
The City of Presidents
For most of its early life the area was part of Braintree. It separated and incorporated as the town of Quincy in 1792, named for Colonel John Quincy, the grandfather of Abigail Adams. By then the town had already produced John Adams, born here in 1735, the second President of the United States, and his son John Quincy Adams, born in 1767, the sixth. Both men, and their wives, are buried in the crypt of United First Parish Church on Hancock Street, the only church in the country that is the resting place of two presidents. Their birthplaces still stand on Franklin Street, the oldest surviving presidential birthplaces in the nation.
Granite and the First Railroad
Quincy sat on a vein of fine gray granite, and in the 1820s the city became the center of American stone quarrying. To haul granite for the Bunker Hill Monument, the Granite Railway opened in 1826, widely considered the first commercial railroad in the United States. Quincy granite went into buildings and monuments across the country, and the quarries drew waves of immigrant labor that reshaped the city.
Shipyards and a City of Firsts
Quincy became a city in 1888. Along the Fore River, the shipyard grew into one of the great shipbuilding centers in the country, launching warships through both World Wars and employing tens of thousands. Quincy also turned out to be a birthplace of American business: Howard Johnson’s began here in the 1920s, and the very first Dunkin’ Donuts opened on the Southern Artery in 1950.
Modern Quincy
The shipyard closed in the 1980s, and Quincy reinvented itself as a residential city and a transit hub on the Red Line into Boston. Beginning in the late twentieth century it became a major gateway for Asian immigration, and today nearly three in ten residents are of Asian descent. Quincy Center and North Quincy are lined with Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants, groceries, and family associations, and a long downtown redevelopment has been remaking Quincy Center for the better part of two decades.
Sources: City of Quincy; National Park Service, Adams National Historical Park; U.S. Census Bureau.