Kingston, IL (Village)

Kingston is a DeKalb County village of 1,108 people at the 2020 census, in the Kishwaukee country of northern Illinois. Potawatomi communities lived in this fertile river landscape before the later settlement took shape. Kingston's post office opened in 1837, and the village grid grew around the railroad and Main Street, with no county courthouse to organize it. The Stuart brothers platted the town in 1876, and two brick houses they built still stand on South Main Street.

By the early 1900s Kingston had become a two-railroad hub with stores, a hotel, bank, creamery, blacksmith shops, stockyards, and even a baseball team, the Kingston Tigers. A 1908 fire swept through much of the west side of Main Street, but the village kept its community calendar: Kingston Township Park opened in 1912, and the annual Kingston Picnic ran for more than a century. Genoa-Kingston CUSD 424 links the village to nearby Genoa for schools. The local read is a small rail town whose old commercial ambition is still visible in the street names, brick houses, park, and railroad address.