Johnston, Rhode Island
Johnston is a town in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 28,769 at the 2010 census. Johnston is the site of the Clemence Irons House (1691) a stone-ender museum and the only landfill in Rhode Island. Incorporated on March 6, 1759, Johnston was named for the colonial attorney general, Augustus Johnston.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 24.4 square miles (63 km2). 23.7 square miles (61 km2) of it is land and 0.7 square miles (1.8 km2) (2.91%) is water.
Neighborhoods
Neighborhoods in Johnston:
Thornton (includes part of Cranston),
Graniteville,
Hughesdale,
Morgan Mills,
Manton,
Simmonsville,
Pocasset,
West End,
Belknap, and
Frog City.
History
The area was first settled by English settlers in the seventeenth-century as a farming community. In 1759 the town officially separated from Providence and was incorporated on March 6, 1759. Johnston was named for the current colonial attorney general, Augustus Johnston, who was later burned in effigy during the Stamp Act protests in 1765 and then fled Rhode Island as a Tory during the American Revolution in 1779. The first house of worship in Johnston opened when the Baptist Meeting House in Belknap was constructed in 1771. During the American Revoluation Rhode Island's only gunpowder mill was constructed in Graniteville, and the town hosted American General John Sullivan for a dinner in 1779 upon his departure from Rhode Island to fight in New York. In 1790 the Belknap School, the first public school in the town, was founded. In 1791 the Providence and Norwich Turnpike (today's Plainfield Pike) was chartered.