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The Black Hawk Indian War of 1832 led to the expulsion of the Native
Americans who had settlements and burial mounds in the area, and set
the stage for the founding of Elgin. Thousands of militiamen and soldiers
of Gen. Winfield Scott's army marched through the Fox River valley during
the war and accounts of the area's fertile soils and flowing springs
soon filtered east. In New York, James T. Gifford and his brother Hezekiah
Gifford heard tales of this area ripe for settlement, and travelled west.
Looking for a site on the stagecoach route from Chicago to Galena, they
eventually settled on a spot where the Fox River could be bridged. In
April 1835, they established the city, naming it after the Scottish hymn "The
Song of Elgin."[2] Elgin National Watch Company "Father Time" logoIn
1849, the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad reached Elgin, which later
would be served by railroads running along both banks of the Fox River,
linking the growing town to Chicago and other urban centers.[3]
Early
Elgin achieved fame for the butter and dairy goods it sold to the city
of Chicago. Gail Borden established a condensed milk factory here in
1866, and the local library is named in his honor. The dairy industry
became less important with the arrival of the Elgin Watch Company. The
watch factory employed three generations of Elginites from the late 19th
to early 20th century, when it was the largest producer of fine watches
in the United States. Today, the clocks at Chicago's Union Station still
bear the Elgin name.[4] In 1872, Elgin attracted a major state institution,
the Northern Illinois State Mental Hospital[5] and later a Veterans Administration
Hospital.[6] Historic Print of Main Building of Elgin State Hospital,
which was demolished in 1993.Elgin has a long tradition of education
and invention. Elgin is home to the Elgin Academy, the oldest coeducational,
non-sectarian college preparatory school west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Elgin High School boasts five navy admirals, a Nobel Prize winner, a
Pulitzer Prize winner, a Tony Award winner, two Academy Award-winning
producers, Olympic athletes and a General Motors CEO among its alumni.
Elgin resident John Murphy invented the motorized streetsweeper in 1914
and later formed the Elgin Sweeper Corporation. Pioneering African-American
chemist Lloyd Hall was an Elgin native, as was the legendary marketer
and car stereo pioneer Earl "Madman" Muntz and Max Adler, founder
of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, America's first planetarium.[7]
Local historian E.C. Alft has written several books and an ongoing newspaper
column about Elgin's history. |
