The town was founded in the Old Prussian area formerly settled by the Pomesanians and conquered by the Teutonic Knights by the mid-13th century.

First mentioned as Vrienstadt in a 1255 deed, the estates were ceded to the distinguished Stangen noble family by the Bishop of Pomesania in 1293.

[4] Soon after, in 1525, in became part of the newly established Duchy of Prussia, a vassal state of Poland, under the Hohenzollern duke Albert.

From 1818 until 1920 Freystadt belonged to Kreis Rosenberg in the administrative district of Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder in the province of West Prussia, part of Germany from 1871.

In October 1831, several Polish cavalry and infantry units and honor guards of the November Uprising stopped in the town on the way to their internment places.