Founding year: Wikidata. First post office: 1839.The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Poestenkill’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Poestenkill is more historic than 69% of U.S. towns, #530 of 758 in New York. Its age holds the grade up; its National Register listings pull it down.
B+
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Poestenkill’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 Poestenkill’s 0.0 sits below most of its state (10% of New York towns have fewer) while its 0 listings outnumber those of 23% of U.S. towns.
NoteThe founding year comes from Wikidata alone; no second source gives 1770.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C+ to A. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±6.6 points).
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 Poestenkill’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The area was first settled around 1770, and the town of Poestenkill was created from part of the Town of Sand Lake on March 2, 1848.
When the American Revolutionary War broke out, six men served from the area. One, named Benjamin Cotterel, is said to have carried the first wheelbarrow of earth to Bunker Hill.
The first school in the area was established in or soon after 1788 on land set aside for that purpose by Stephen Van Rensselaer III. Five men from Poestenkill served in the War of 1812, all joining the Eddy expedition.
The first regular church in Poestenkill was the First Baptist church, organized in 1814 and located in East Poestenkill.
Passages that mention Poestenkill, cut from the printed page as they were published.
Troy and Rensselaer county, New York1925 · page 590Read the page →
Read the text
October, 1924. With the advent of the automobile bus an additional system of suburban transportation has been developed, lines of busses running from Troy to Grafton and Berlin, Poestenkill, Schaghticoke, Hoosick Falls, Cambridge and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and from Averill Park to Albany. The Troy Fifth Avenue Bus Company, operating from the business center of the city northward along Fifth and Sixth avenues to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street began operations May 16, 1915.
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
Poestenkill, 1770 to 2010
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In 1770, according to Wikidata. Poestenkill’s post office opened in 1839, and the census of 1850 counted 2,092 people here.
How does Poestenkill rank for history?
Poestenkill is more historic than 69% of U.S. towns, #530 of 758 in New York. 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 Poestenkill?
21% of Poestenkill’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±6.6 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 Wikipedia, 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.
