Settled in 1700 and incorporated in 1708, Killingly was the forty-second town established in Connecticut. In 1653, the second John Winthrop obtained a grant of a large tract of land formerly held by the Quinebaug Indian tribe and known as the Quinebaug, or long pond, Country. In May 1708, the General Assembly granted the privileges of a town and defined its boundaries. The choice of the town's name was referred to Governor Saltonstall, whose ancestral manorial possessions lay in Killanslie and Pontefract, Yorkshire, and “Killingly,” formerly spelled Kellingly, was taken from this part of England. The early name of Killingly was Aspinock, even after the town was authorized by the Connecticut General Assembly, and it may have been taken from the Indian word “aucks” or “ock,” meaning the place where, and the name of an early English settler, Lieutenant Aspinwell. Killingly was the home of Mary Kies, the first woman to receive a patent from the United States Patent Office. It was also the birthplace of William Torrey Harris and Sidney Percy Marland, Jr., the fourth and nineteenth United States Commissioners of Education. Charles Lewis Tiffany was born and lived here before moving to New York City, where in 1837, in partnership with John B. Young, also of Killingly, he opened a stationer's store on Broadway that later became Tiffany and Company. During the 1830s, Killingly was the largest producer of cotton goods in Connecticut, and a century later it was the curtain capital of the world. Today Killingly is a community of diversified industries and is the second largest town in both area and population in Windham County.