He was a former commander (or Rao) of the northern branch of the Maratha Confederate Army, whose control ranged to the Tarai baselands of the Himalayas.

Since the last days of the Mughal Empire, government revenue documents have interchangeably referred to the village as Ratangarh, Azamgarh-urf-Ratangarh (literally: Azamgarh-alias-Ratangarh), or Ratangarh-urf-Azamgarh.

At the independence and partition of India in 1947, the region as a whole witnessed an influx of Punjabis and Sikhs from the areas that now make up Pakistan, though Ratangarh itself was relatively unaffected by this demographic change.

In a notable event, on 6 April 1885, a meteorite was sighted over Ratangarh and fell close to the nearby settlement of Chandpur.

The village reflects the broader cultural background of the region of Rohilkhand, flavored by its proximity to the hill state of Uttarakhand.

These species are now confined to the nearby Jim Corbett National Park, with only monkeys and peacocks remaining in numbers in the village area.

The temperature ranges from a daytime maximum of about 42 °C (108 °F) at the height of summer to a nighttime minimum of about 0 °C (32 °F) during the coldest period of winter.

While it gets relatively hot in the summer, the 1886 edition of the Imperial Gazetteer of India compared the district's climate favorably to that of both the Tarai and areas further south: "Its proximity to the Himalayas renders the climate of Bijnor cool and pleasant, while the abundance of drainage channels prevents the District from being as unhealthy as other tracts near the foot of the mountains."