Upper Canada. Incorporated as a town in 1838, the first mayor of Kingston was Thomas Kirkpatrick. Kingston had the largest population of any centre in Upper Canada until the 1840s. Kingston was incorporated as a city in 1846.
A municipal police force was established on December 20, 1841.
Kingston was chosen as the first capital of the united Canada’s and served in that role from 1841 to 1844. The first meeting of the Parliament of the United Canada’s on June 13, 1841, was held on the site of what is now Kingston General Hospital. The city was considered too small and lacking in amenities, however, and its location made it vulnerable to American attack. Consequently, the capital was moved to alternating locations in Montreal and Toronto, and then later to Ottawa in 1857. Subsequently, Kingston's growth slowed considerably and its national importance declined.
The Kingston General Hospital site also held the remains of 1,400 Irish immigrants who had died in Kingston in fever sheds along the waterfront, during the typhus epidemic of 1847, while fleeing the Great Famine. Their remains were re-interred at the city's St. Mary's Cemetery in 1966.
Kingston was the home of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. One of his residences in Kingston, Bellevue House, is now a popular National Historic Site of Canada open to the public and depicting the house as it would have been in the 1840s when he lived there.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kingston remained an important Great Lakes port and a centre for shipbuilding and locomotive manufacturing, including the Canadian Locomotive Company, at one time the largest locomotive works in the British Empire. Most heavy industry has now left the city, and employment is now primarily in the institutional, military, and service/retail sectors.
Kingston grew moderately through the 20th century through a series of annexations of lands in adjacent Kingston
