The unincorporated communities of Addison, Allenton, Aurora, Nenno, and Saint Anthony are located with the town.

In the early 19th century when the first white settlers arrived in Southeastern Wisconsin, the Potawatomi and Menominee Native Americans inhabited the land now occupied by the Town of Addison.

In 1831, the Menominee surrendered their claims to the land to the United States Federal Government through the Treaty of Washington.

The Potawatomi surrendered their land claims in 1833 through the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which (after being ratified in 1835) required them to leave the area by 1838.

[3] While many Native people moved west of the Mississippi River to Kansas, some chose to remain, and were referred to as "strolling Potawatomi" in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by white settlers.

Located on the east branch of the Rock River, the community formed in 1882 around a depot of the Wisconsin Central Railroad.

[7] According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 36.2 square miles (93.7 km2), all of it land.