As many know, our community has not always been known as Elgin, we were first called Shanley by the early settlers. So how did we end up changing our name to Elgin? According to the legend, the early settlers named the community Shanley because of the honorable ancestry of the name. (The meaning of Shanley is “Old Hero.”) However with other communities in North Dakota having similar names, the United States Post Office’s employees were getting confused and word came asking the community to change our name.
A meeting was called and a group of men assembled around noon to decide on a new name. However this would not be a simple task to complete, with all the men having their own ideas of what the town should be named, it looked as if they would be notifying the U.S. Post Office that they could not agree on a name and that it would continue to be Shanely. The meeting continued on for many hours and the men started to get hungry, it would just be a matter of time and desperation before the men would agree on a name.
A man, whose name is unknown, had been sitting in the back of the room watching the flies buzz around. He became overcome by his hungry stomach and pulled out his watch to look at the time. The man noticed, probably for the first time that his watch was a wonderful work of art and craftsmanship. He took a moment and thought about this reliable watch that he trusted.
All of the sudden, he raised his watch high into the air for all to see and announced, “It’s time to eat!” As if being struck by a happy after-thought he suggested, “Why don’t we call our town “Elgin?” For the watch the man was wearing was crafted by the Elgin National Watch Company.
It was agreed upon then and so it is now.
(Information for this post came from Elgin’s 50th Anniversary Book)
