[1][2] His father, who was then County Judge and Surrogate, moved to Norwich in 1856 where Kingsley was raised and received his early education at private schools.
The engineering training he did receive though enabled him to earn enough money to resume his education in 1873 with the junior class at Williams College.
[3] In 1878, Kingsley moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to work as an assistant on the newly formed United States Entomological Commission.
[2] He had served over the years as president of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences at Lincoln,[7] and the American Morphological Society at Johns Hopkins University,[8] and held memberships in several other scientific organizations both nationally and internationally.
[5][11] John Sterling Kingsley died of a heart attack on 29 August 1929 while traveling with his daughter aboard the S.S. President Taft.
At the time of his death, the ship was some three days away from docking at Yokohama, Japan, and the decision was made to commit his remains to the sea.