Founding year: Wikidata. First post office: 1858.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Assumption’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Assumption is more historic than 53% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
B−
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Assumption’s overall grade.
Few Illinois towns list much on the Register (a typical Illinois town has 0.5 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Assumption’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (28% of Illinois towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C− to B+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±6.3 points). Two sources give 1856.
Founding year: Wikidata (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Assumption’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 1,918 in 1910; 1,155 people lived here in 2020.
16 censuses, 1870–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Assumption’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Assumption, building by building, 1893–1916
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
Assumption began in 1852 as a station called "Tacusah" or "Tacusa" on the Illinois Central Railroad. The present name is after Assumption Parish, Louisiana. In 1856, Édouard-Élisée Malhiot, a French Canadian Patriote leader who had been living in exile in Louisiana, established a settlement near the Tacusa station that attracted approximately 50 emigrant French Canadian families. He named the settlement L'Assomption after the Louisiana parish. The post office name changed to Assumption in 1858. The community was incorporated as the City of Assumption in 1876.
In 1856, according to Wikidata. Assumption’s post office opened in 1858, and the census of 1870 counted 590 people here.
How does Assumption rank for history?
Assumption is more historic than 53% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
How old are the homes in Assumption?
36% of Assumption’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±6.3 points), against a typical 11% for an Illinois town; the median home was built in 1949.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (1), Wikidata (1), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2015
