Town History

This town, named after the Marquis de LaFayette, was taken from Pompey and Onondaga and organized April 15, 1825.

The French general Marquis de Lafayette, called the hero of two worlds, was prominent in both the American revolution and the French Revolution. Born on Sept. 6, 1757, to a noble family in the Auvergne, he defied the French authorities in 1777 by crossing the Atlantic to offer his services to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
A friend of George Washington, who became his model, he served under him at the Battle of the Brandywine and at Valley Forge.

The town contains 28,200 acres of land, of which 6,400 acres belongs to the Onondaga Reservation. The surface of the town is hilly and broken, the high ridge between Butternut and Onondaga Creeks, the two principal streams, having steep declivities and rising from three to six hundred feet in altitude. The valleys on the east and west of this ridge - Sherman Hollow and Christian Hollow - extend the entire length of the town, and present an unusually rich and beautiful landscape when viewed from the summits.

Located in the heart of New York, the center of town is at the at the crossing of the two longest roads in the country, spanning all the way from Canada to Florida and the East Coast to the West!

Marquis de Lafayette

Town Historian: Rick Stout
Phone: 315-870-4705
Email: [email protected]