Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts and was the hometown of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. It bears the nickname "The City of Presidents". As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 88,025. Quincy was formed in 1792 and named for Colonel John Quincy, and was originally part of Braintree. The city's name is pronounced "Quinzy". Howard Johnson's and Dunkin Donuts were founded and started in Quincy. (courtesy of Wikipedia) Quincy was first settled by English immigrants in 1625, as Mount Wollaston (with a most unusual history), subsequently became part of Braintree, Massachusetts, was officially incorporated as a separate town in 1792, and made a city in 1888..
Among its several firsts was the Granite Railway, the first commercial railroad in the United States. It was constructed in 1826 to carry granite from a quarry in Quincy to the Neponset River in Milton so that the stone could then be taken by boat to erect the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Quincy granite became famous throughout the nation, and stonecutting became the city's principal economic activity.
Second was shipbuilding. Sailing ships were built in Quincy for many years, and the final known clipper ship built was in Germantown in the 1870s. The Fore River area became a shipbuilding center in the 1880s -- originally owned by Thomas Watson of telephone fame -- and many famous warships were built at the Fore River Shipyard, including the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2), the battleships USS Massachusetts (BB-59) and USS Nevada (BB-36), and the 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 Ship Building Museum. John J. Kilroy, the author of the famous Kilroy Was Here graffiti, was a welding inspector at Fore River.
Quincy was also an aviation pioneer; Dennison Field in the Squantum section of town 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, only the second air show in America. It was later leased to the Navy for an airfield, and served as a reserve Squantum Naval Air base into the 1950s.
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