Kingsley, Pennsylvania

Kingsley is in Harford Township, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, United States. Kingsley was named after Revolutionary War veteran Rufus Kingsley, who had been the first settler in the area.

Kingsley is located in the Endless Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is in rural Susquehanna County. The population in 1900 was 75, and the current population is about 50. The town itself is very small but the outskirts extend up to ten miles outside the actual town. The population in the outskirts of the town is over two hundred. Kingsley is located about a half-hour from the cities of Binghamton, New York and Scranton, Pennsylvania. Most of the residents have lived in the town their whole lives.

In 1809, a man named Rufus Kingsley, his wife Lucinda, and their four children John, Nancy, Rufus, and Lucretia moved from Windham, Connecticut to what was then Harford Township (Benning 1). Rufus was born in Windham, Connecticut on February 1, 1763. He fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill, just outside Boston, at the age of thirteen as a drummer boy. He was one of three drummer boys in the battle. He married Lucinda Cutler on October 12, 1786. He moved to present day Kingsley in 1809, where he built a fulling (wool) mill and a house. His home still stands today and so does a maple tree that he and his family planted. He died on May 26, 1846 at the age of eighty-three (Kesteloot). His wife died three days later. They are both buried in the Universalist Cemetery in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania because they attend the Universalist church all their lives.

John, Rufus’s son, lived in town his whole life. He married Edith Chase. He and Edith had at least one daughter. He built a “mansion” next to his father’s home (Benning 1). His house burnt while another family lived in it, long after he died. John and his wife are buried in the Harford Cemetery, Harford, Pennsylvania. John had at least one daughter named Ellen. She married another town resident Manning Perigo. She and Manning had at least two children named Bert and Edith. Nancy and Lucretia, Rufus’s daughters, moved out of town. They both, at different points in time, taught at a school in Brooklyn. Not much is known about Rufus’s other children.

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