Elgin, Illinois

City: Elgin

County: Kane

State: Illinois

Lat/Long: 42.0333, -88.2667

Located in northeastern Illinois along the Fox River, nearly forty miles west of Chicago, Elgin was founded about 1836 and named after a Scottish hymn by one of its first settlers, James T. Gifford. The town received a U.S. Post Office in July 1837, and became a hub for watch manufacturing as well as the production of dairy goods.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed., (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 352, 511; Edward Callary, Place Names of Illinois (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 108; Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World. A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer or Geographical Dictionary of the World (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1880), 1110.