Founding year: Wikidata; Wikipedia’s history section gives the same year. First post office: 1802.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives DeRuyter’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, DeRuyter is more historic than 81% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
A−
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of DeRuyter’s overall grade.
New York towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical New York town has 12.3 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so DeRuyter’s 7.8 sits near the middle of its state (42% of New York towns have fewer) while its 1 listings outnumber those of 51% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from B to A. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±5.0 points). Two sources give 1798.
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 DeRuyter’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
DeRuyter was one of five towns formed before Madison County was created. It was established by a partition of the town of Cazenovia in 1798. The town is part of a region called "The Gore", a territory created by a surveying error.
Previous to 1795, DeRuyter was included in the town of Whitestown and was part of the "Lincklaen Purchase". "Tromp Township" was the original name given by John Lincklaen, an agent of the Holland Land Company, in honor of a fellow countryman, Admiral Maarten Tromp. The new town of DeRuyter was formed on March 15, 1798. Jan Lincklaen once again named it in honor of a fellow countryman, Admiral Michiel DeRuyter.
Sig Sautelle's Circus wintered and trained in DeRuyter from 1896 to the early 1900s.
Passages that mention DeRuyter, cut from the printed page as they were published.
History of Madison County, state of New York1872Read the page →
Read the text
readily dropped when this, with No. I and No. 6 of the Clinton purchase, became in 1795, a part of Cazenovia ; but when anact, was passed March 15th, 1798, authorizing the formation of the new town of DeRuyter, its inhabitants soon grew to be familiar with the illustrious title. At its formation under this act, it embraced its present limits, with Georgetown, in Madison County, and Lincklaen, Otselic, * German and Pitcher in Chenango County. Its population
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Madison county, state of New York1900 · page 246Read the page →
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Lincklaen, — John Wilson and James Smith. The former located in the town of Lincklaen ; the latter was long afterwards a resident of DeRuyter. These road-cutters found the wilderness to be continuous and extremely dense, from DeRuyter settlement southward, far into Ger- * See Spafford's Gazetteer, 1812.
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
History of Madison county, state of New York1900 · page 264Read the page →
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The proposed railroad of that day, from Chittenango to Cazenovia, was to have been extended to DeRuyter. In the winter of 1832, the first railroad meeting ever held in this part of Madison County, cr in contiguous parts of Onondaga, Cortland and Chenango, convened at the public house of T. C. Nye.* The death of Judge Yates in 1836, at the commencement of operations for building this road, suspended matters, and virtually caused the company to aban-
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History of Madison County, state of New York1872Read the page →
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Cazenovia was formed from Paris and Whitestown, Herkimer County, March 5th, 1795. DeRuyter was taken off in 179S, Sullivan in 1803, Smithfield and Nelson in 1807, and a part of Fenner in 1823. It is the center town on the western border of the county, and is bounded on the north by Sullivan, east by Fenner and Nelson, south by DeRuyter, and west by Onondaga County. The surface of this town is a rolling upland, broken by the deep valleys of
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
DeRuyter, 1798 to 1899
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In 1798, according to Wikidata and Wikipedia’s history of the town. DeRuyter’s post office opened in 1802, and the census of 1820 counted 1,214 people here.
How does DeRuyter rank for history?
DeRuyter is more historic than 81% 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.
What is on the National Register in DeRuyter?
One place: the Seventh Day Baptist Church (listed 2005).
How old are the homes in DeRuyter?
30% of DeRuyter’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±5.0 points), against a typical 27% for a New York town; the median home was built in 1968.
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 the National Register of Historic Places (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 old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
