[7] After the Civil War, Adam Plummer purchased ten acres of land for $1000, south of the plantation[8] and sought out and recovered family members that had been sold during slavery to deep south plantations, thus establishing the settlement.

[11][12][13] In the late 19th century, a pumping station was constructed in the Palestine subdivision that supplied water to the city of Hyattsville.

[11] After World War I, the residents of East Hyattsville and Palestine began a movement toward incorporation to improve services.

[11] By 1924, there were several hundred residents; at 49th Avenue and Decatur Street, there was a small neighborhood center with a few stores and a post office.

The first items on the agenda for the new municipality were street paving and lighting, construction of a concrete bridge across the Anacostia River, and arrangement with the fledgling Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission to bring water and sewer pipes into the town.

His father, Tadaatsu, came to the United States in 1872 to study and stayed to marry an American woman and pursue a distinguished career in civil engineering.

Kinjiro Matsudaira, born in Pennsylvania in 1885, was elected Mayor of Edmonston for a second time in 1943, during World War II.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, development consisted of sporadic house construction on vacant lots within the established subdivisions.

After World War II, the Edmonston Terrace subdivision was constructed consisting of an organized development of 41 nearly identical two-story, brick side-gable houses.

[14] The Town successfully advocated Prince George's County Government for a new state-of-the-art $6 million facility, which received recognition for its utilization of three massive Archimedes' screws, a flood pumping technology developed by the eponymous ancient Greek mathematician rarely utilized on such a scale in the United States.

[15] In November 2009, the Town broke ground on its "Green Street" in a ceremony attended by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson.

[17] The street features LED streetlights, a green power purchase agreement, elevated crosswalks, traffic calming bump-out raingardens and permeable pavement bike lanes that together capture nearly 100% of stormwater runoff.

The project has received various awards and recognition, including an "Innovations in Infrastructure" award by the White House's Champions for Change Program[18] and sparked the adoption of policies requiring complete green streets in municipalities nationwide.

[19] The Edmonston municipal government consists of four members of council and a mayor who, beginning in May 2008, are elected to three-year terms.

Elected positions are essentially volunteer in nature and are paid a small stipend for expenses.

The structure of the government is a mostly "strong" mayor system, meaning that the mayor has administrative control over government operations and presents his or her budget each year for adoption, though the appointment of department heads must meet the approval of the council.

From Edmonston, MD 201 extends south to Washington, D.C., and north to Interstate 95/Interstate 495, the Capital Beltway.