Elgin Area Historical Society
The Elgin Area Historical Society is a non-profit organization that preserves and presents the history of the Elgin, Illinois area. Located at 360 Park Street in Elgin, Illinois on the Elgin Academy campus. The historic "Old Main" building houses offices, research facilities, the Elgin History Museum, and a gift shop. History The Society was created in 1961 through the efforts of local authors and historians such as LaRoy Morning, Madeline Sadler Waggoner, Karl Lehr and E. C. Alft. The Society lacked a permanent home for many years and stored its donated artifacts in the homes of Society members and in the basement of Elgin’s Gail Borden Public Library District. Building The Society has occupied its current home, Old Main, since 1987. Old Main opened on December 1, 1856, as a private school, the Elgin Academy, and is noted for its Greek Revival design. Old Main was Elgin’s first building entered on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1911 lightning caused a fire t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elgin, Illinois
Elgin ( ) is a city in Cook and Kane counties in the northern part of the U.S. state of Illinois. Elgin is located northwest of Chicago, along the Fox River. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 114,797, the seventh-largest city in Illinois. History The Indian Removal Act of 1830 and 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 they traveled west. Looking for a site on the stagecoach route from Chicago to Galena, Illinois, they eventually settled on a spot where the Fox River could be bridged. In April 1835, the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elgin Academy (Elgin, Illinois)
Elgin Academy is an independent, coeducational, college-preparatory school in Elgin, Illinois, United States. Elgin Academy is notable for many accomplishments, such as its Scholastic Bowl and ACES teams. History The Academy was established by charter of the Illinois General Assembly in 1839 to provide students with a classical education. The Academy's original building, Old Main, was constructed in 1855-6, and is on the United States' National Register of Historic Places. It now serves as a museum of the Elgin Area Historical Society. The original charter was granted by the Illinois legislature and signed in 1839, only four years after the founding of Elgin. The Academy opened, and has continued, with a non-denominational and coeducational policy. In 1856 the first building, Old Main, was completed at a cost of $19,000 and opened for classes, but the first diploma was not awarded until 1872 when Laura Davidson, the granddaughter of James Gifford, Elgin's founder, earned the ho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gail Borden Public Library District
Gail Borden Public Library is a public library district located in Elgin, Illinois. District boundaries include the city and villages of Elgin, South Elgin, Bartlett, Streamwood, and Hoffman Estates. The library is a member of Reaching Across Illinois Library System, one of two multitype regional library systems in Illinois. History The library was named in honor of Gail Borden (November 9, 1801 – January 11, 1874), who in 1856 invented condensed milk. Gail Borden never lived in Elgin or donated any funds for the library which bears his name, but in 1892, his step sons, Samuel and Alfred Church, residents of Elgin, purchased and donated the Scofield Mansion at 50 N. Spring Street to house the new library. Their only request was that the library be forever and always known and called the Gail Borden Public Library. The library remained at the 50 Spring Street location until the late 1960s when the weight of the books was beginning to strain the ability of the building to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Greek Revival
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but also in Greece itself following independence in 1832. It revived many aspects of the forms and styles of ancient Greek architecture, in particular the Greek temple, with varying degrees of thoroughness and consistency. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture, which had for long mainly drawn from Roman architecture. The term was first used by Charles Robert Cockerell in a lecture he gave as Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1842. With a newfound access to Greece and Turkey, or initially to the books produced by the few who had visited the sites, archaeologist-architects of the period studied the Doric and Ionic orders. Despite its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Register Of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic value". A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one and a half million properties on the National Register, 95,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history, the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Its goals are to help property owners a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elgin National Watch Company
The Elgin National Watch Company, commonly known as Elgin Watch Company, was a major US watch maker from 1864 to 1968. The company sold watches under the names Elgin, Lord Elgin, and Lady Elgin. For nearly 100 years, the company's manufacturing complex in Elgin, Illinois, was the world's largest site dedicated to watchmaking. History The company was first incorporated in August 1864 as the National Watch Company in Chicago, Illinois, by Philo Carpenter, Howard Z. Culver, Benjamin W. Raymond, George M. Wheeler, Thomas S. Dickerson and W. Robbins. In September of the same year, the founders visited the Waltham Watch Company in Waltham, Massachusetts and successfully convinced seven of Waltham's watchmakers to come to work for their new company. The growing young city of Elgin, Illinois, some 30 miles northwest of Chicago, was chosen as the factory site. Initially, as part of the deal, the city was asked to donate 35 acres (142,000 m2) of land for the construction of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Song Of Hiawatha
''The Song of Hiawatha'' is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area of Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem is based on oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, but it also contains his own innovations. Longfellow drew some of his material from his friendship with Ojibwe Chief '' Kahge-ga-gah-bowh'', who would visit at Longfellow's home. He also had frequent encounters with Black Hawk and other Sauk people on Boston Common, and he drew from ''Algic Researches'' (1839) and other writings by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an ethnographer and United States Indian agent, and from ''Heckewelder's Narratives''. In sentiment, scope, overall conception, and many particulars, Longfellow insis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and '' Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely translate Dante Alighieri's ''Divine Comedy'' and was one of the fireside poets from New England. Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He graduated from Bowdoin College and became a professor there and, later, at Harvard College after studying in Europe. His first major poetry collections were ''Voices of the Night'' (1839) and ''Ballads and Other Poems'' (1841). He retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, and he lived the remainder of his life in the Revolutionary War headquarters of George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns when her dress cau ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Elgin Area School District U46
Elgin Area School District U46, often referred to as "U-46", is a unit school district headquartered in Elgin, Kane County, Illinois. Covering , the district serves portions of eleven communities in the northwest suburbs of Chicago in Cook, DuPage and Kane Counties. School District U-46 serves over 40,000 children in grades preK-12. The district ranks as the second largest in Illinois with forty elementary schools, eight middle schools and five high schools. Tony Sanders is the CEO as of August 2022. Special programs *Center House *Central School Programs *DREAM Academy, an alternative school *High School Academy Program, a program for gifted students in High School *Preschool Programs *Radio station WEPS (88.9 FM) *School Within a School (SWAS) Program, a program for gifted students in 4th-8th Grade; also called Inquiry and Gifted Network for Ingenuity Talent and Exploration (IGNITE) Program * Planetarium/Observatory Schools, alphabetically See also *List of school dis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Historical Societies In Illinois
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Organizations Established In 1961
An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from the Greek word ''organon'', which means tool or instrument, musical instrument, and organ. Types There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions, etc. A hybrid organization is a body that operates in both the public sector and the private sector simultaneously, fulfilling public duties and developing commercial market activities. A voluntary association is an organization consisting of volunteers. Such organizations may be able to operate without legal formalities, depending on jurisdiction, including ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Museums In Kane County, Illinois
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from the conservation and documentation of their collection, serving researchers and specialists, to catering to the general public. The goal of serving researchers is not only scientific, but intended to serve the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, and children's museums. According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countrie ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |