New Hartford was settled in March 1788 when Jedediah Sanger, who was bankrupted in 1784 by a fire at his farm in Jaffrey, New Hampshire and afterwards moved to the area.

[5] This narrative of a 1000-acre purchase by Sanger for $500 and the ensuing resale to Higbee of half the land for $500 (a 100% profit) is repeated in The History of Oneida County, New York by Samuel W. Durant, 1878 which used the Jones' Annals of 1851 as a primary reference.

The story was expressed in an address at the 1888 New Hartford Centennial by Henry Hurlburt, again citing Jones' Annals as his source.

This version can be found at the Town of New Hartford website and is attributed to the New Hartford Historical Society: "Sanger traveled to Philadelphia and purchased 1,000 acres (400 ha) of land at $.50 per acre on credit from George Washington and George Clinton.

The following year he shrewdly sold a little over half the land on the east side of the Sauquoit Creek to Joseph Higbee (Higby) at $1.00 per acre.

"[7] Present-day New Hartford covers over 16,000 acres (6,500 ha) in area, considerably more than that contained in Sanger's original purchases.

Other portions of New Hartford is made up of land from the following Patents:[4][8][9] In 1789, Sanger relocated his family to the settlement and erected a sawmill.

Shortly after arriving, he was commissioned Captain in the local militia and rose to the rank of Brigadier-general at the time of the War of 1812.

[4] John French (1766–1839) arrived from New Hampshire in 1792 and settled another farm, as did Colonel Nathan Seward (1758–1815) of Connecticut,[4] also a Revolutionary War veteran.

[11] Other settlers included Nathan Seward, Ashbel Beach, Amos Ives, Solomon Blodget, Salmon Butler, Joel Blair, Agift Hill, Stephen Bushnell, Joseph Jennings.

More settlers from Connecticut were Henry Blackstone, Zenas Gibbs, Ashbel Tylor, and Nehemiah Ensworth (from Canterbury), all arriving in 1791.

Whitestown originally contained all of New York state west of Herkimer, and was subsequently split into many counties and towns with New Hartford being the last.

[4] The earliest manufacturing operations were concentrated along the Sauquoit Creek and utilized water as the primary power source.

Another boon to the economy of New Hartford was the Seneca Turnpike, a toll road connecting Utica to the western part of the state.

The following is listed on the National Register of Historic Places: As of the census[15] of 2000, there were 21,172 people, 8,601 households, and 5,625 families residing in the town.