Elgin
Elgin is an unincorporated community between Robbins and Glenmary in southern Scott County. Originally known as Sedgemoor, this small railroad community came to life as a place for new arrivals and visitors to the English colony of Rugby to disembark from the Southern Railroad and begin their journey westward along the Rugby Road to the Victorian settlement along the Scott/Morgan/Fentress county lines.
See Also: Communities of Scott County
Geography & Demographics
Elgin is located on the Norfolk Southern Railroad (originally the Cincinnati & Southern Railroad), just south of Robbins and just north of Glenmary. It is located where U.S. Highway 27 and S.R. 52 meet.
Elgin’s population was 282 as of the 2010 census. It has a zip code of 37732. The zip code is almost entirely enclosed by the 37852 (Robbins) zip code, except for a tiny portion of its southeastern side, which adjoins the 37872 (Sunbright) zip code. U.S. 27 near Glenmary is the dividing line between the 37732 and 37872 zip codes.
Elgin has a population density of about 27 people per square mile.
Post Offices
Elgin was first served by the Segemoor Post Office, which opened in October 1880 with Walter S. Allen serving as postmaster. It closed in December 1881. Craven Duncan was the last postmaster.
The Elgin Post Office opened Jan. 14, 1891, with J. Thomas Guthrie serving as postmaster. Other postmasters through the years have included Rebecca A. Guthrie, William A. Miller, Craven Duncan, Isaac M. Shoemaker, Samuel J. Norris, Andrew J. Love, Louise M. Smith, Kathryn Cunningham, Alice E. Davis, Elsie M. Phillips, Zelma Smith, June B. Jeffers, Thelma A. Galloway, Dorthy C. Mathis, Lawrence Hill, and Christine M. Vespie (1983).
Schools
Today, students who live in Elgin go to Robbins School for grades K-8, and Scott High School in Huntsville for grades 9-12.
That was not always the case. Historical elementary schools in Elgin have included Rugby Road, which was located just west of the railroad, and Gum Branch, which was located further west near the Sheep Ranch community in western Scott County.
High school students traditionally went to Robbins High School, which opened in 1906 (though it did not have students old enough for high school until the 1910s). The high school closed in 1971, with the opening of the consolidated Scott High School in Helenwood (now Huntsville).
Churches
Elgin is one of the rare Scott County communities without a Baptist church, though several are located nearby in Elgin, West Robbins, East Robbins, and Robbins proper.
Elgin does, however, have two churches: Elgin Church of Christ, and Rugby Road Methodist Church.
Business & Commerce
Today, almost the only business in Elgin worth noting is Stop & Go, a convenience store just south of the U.S. 27 intersection with S.R. 52, which was originally owned by the Bertram family (specifically, Dickie Bertram).
However, that has not always been the case. A garage once stood at the 27/52 intersection, though it has been torn down. An old commercial building, now vacant, still stands across U.S. 27 near the intersection. Further south, at the intersection of U.S. 27 and High Street, is the abandoned commercial building that was once a hardware store owned by Ray Shoemaker and called Ray Shoemaker & Son Hardware. He owned the store for 31 years until his death in 2000.
Further west on S.R. 52 are a pair of abandoned commercial buildings, one of which is most recently housed Vickie’s Hair Fashions.
On Rugby School Road (which was the main road before S.R. 52 was built) is an old commercial building that most recently housed a pizza parlor owned by Rowdie Epperson and an adjoining video rental store.
A relatively new business at the intersection of S.R. 52 and West Robbins Road is Bri’Obbies, a roadside food stand owned by Robbie and Bridget Muse.
There is a community-owned Elgin Community Center that was built in the 1990s and remains in operation. Mountain People’s Health Councils Inc. also maintains a medical clinic on S.R. 52, which offers sliding-scale fee rural health services. A helipad is located at the clinic.
On the opposite end of High Street, where it intersects with U.S. Highway 27, is a Dollar General. It is often referred to as being in Robbins. Several other businesses existed at that spot through the years, including a 1990s-era sporting goods store owned by a different branch of the Shoemaker family.
Origins
Elgin largely came to be with the construction of the Cincinnati & Southern Railroad, which linked Cincinnati in the North with Chattanooga in the South and passed through Scott County, and the establishment of the Rugby Colony to the west. These two advancements occurred almost simultaneously around 1880.
Rugby was founded on the Scott-Morgan-Fentress county line by British author and reformer Thomas Hughes, who envisioned a utopian colony for “second sons” of English gentry. It was established in October 1880, just after the railroad was completed, on land originally purchased by the Boston Board of Land Aid. An ambitious beginning was largely doomed by a typhoid epidemic that swept through the village in 1881, followed by a series of fires and other unfortunate events. By the 1890s, the colony was largely in decline. Decades later, an effort to preserve the old village was launched as Historic Rugby, and a number of original homes and other buildings remain.
Settlers migrating to Rugby would disembark from a train at Elgin and board wagons for the westward trip to the village. Thus, the old road heading west became known as “Rugby Road,” and that was the name given to the community that would eventually become Elgin. Southern Railroad engineers avoided using the word “Rugby Road” as the name of the railroad depot, however, because they didn’t want to confuse it with “Rockwood,” which was located further south. Instead, they called it “Elgin.” An original aspiration to build a railroad spur west from Elgin to Rugby was never realized.
Sedgemoor was also an early name of the community, because that’s what the first post office was called when it opened in 1880. That post office lasted only a little over a year before operations were discontinued. It was another decade before another post office opened and was called Elgin, after the name of the railroad depot.
In those early days, Rugby Road followed an east-to-west route from High Street to what is today an S-curve just west of Elgin, then followed the terrain further west to the Gum Branch area, then on to White Oak Creek, where it crossed the creek and began a gentle ascent to the English village. With the building of S.R. 52, significant advances were made to the old Rugby Road route. Today, parts of the original route follow S.R. 52, while parts that were abandoned are secondary streets known as White Oak Creek Lane, Gum Branch Road, Sheep Ranch Road, Old Rugby Pike, and Rugby School Road. The original railroad crossing can still be seen but is no longer active. On the west end, part of the original road between White Oak Creek and the Rugby settlement is now a hiking trail. An old Warren pony truss bridge across White Oak Creek first built in the 1920s still stands, though it is no longer used.
One of the community’s first businesses was a store located on the Rugby Road and operated by William F. Lee, an early Scott County superintendent of schools who had moved here from Overton County, Tenn., and married the sister of Scott County Sheriff John Goad, Ettie Tennessee Goad. After Ettie died in 1890, Lee and Goad went back into private life and ran a business together on Rugby Road. Later, in 1916, Lee purchased a gasoline distributorship in Oneida, located at the corner of Depot Street and Alberta Street.
A final note on the history of Elgin: It is not clear where the name Elgin came from, or where the name Sedgemoor came from before that. However, the Elgin railroad depot was established in 1881 to serve the Rugby settlement founded by Thomas Hughes. One can’t help but wonder whether Hughes is responsible for christening the depot as Sedgemoor, which was a location in his native England, located in Somerset. Hughes was not from Somerset, but Somerset was not far from Uffington, Hughes’ home. It was the location of the famous Battle of Sedgemoor that occurred during the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685.
First Families
No one has documented the first families to settle what is now Elgin. However, families of note through the years have included the Shoemakers, Todds, and others.
Shoemaker family
Lawrence Ray Shoemaker (1928-2000), who owned Ray Shoemaker & Son Hardware, was the son of Pharo Shoemaker (1907-1989) and Addie Mabel Brewster (1907-1995). Pharo Shoemaker was from Black Creek just northwest of Elgin, who married into the Brewster family that was prominent near Rugby in Morgan County. Pharo’s father, Isaac Marion “Ike” Shoemaker (1881-1948) was originally from Black Creek but eventually moved to the Elgin area, as well. Ike Shoemaker’s father, Bailey Columbus Shoemaker, was one of the first Shoemakers in southern Scott County. He and his wife, Lavada Slagle (1864-1939), had 13 children, and the Shoemaker family descended from them. The earliest generations of the Shoemaker family lived in the Black Creek and Black Creek Crossroads communities. Lavada Slagle was the daughter of Keelan Slagle, who died of wounds sustained in Kentucky during the Civil War.
Todd family
The Todd family predated the Shoemaker family at Elgin, and dates back to George Washington Todd (1846-1925) and his wives, Salina Morris (1845-1882) and Louisa Miller (1866-1920). George Todd’s mother was Hannah Lucinda Todd (1816-1886), who lived at Glenmary. Family genealogists speculate that his father was Andrew Russell Lewallen (1824-1896), a son of Andrew Leutian Lewallen and grandson of Anderson Grant Lewallen, who was perhaps the first settler of the Glenmary area just south of Elgin.
George Todd had 17 children — eight with Salina and nine with Louisa, who he married two years after his first wife’s death.
Tragically, multiple members of the Todd family were killed on the railroad. Hannah Lucinda Todd died while crossing the tracks at Elgin in 1886. Her youngest son, James Todd, was killed two years later in Jellico, while working as a switchman for the L&N Railroad.
Hawn family
Another early Elgin family of note was the Hawn family, which was originally from the Mill Creek area in Morgan County.
Jonathan N. Hawn (1840-1905) married Elizabeth Young (1842-1927), and they had seven children. Their oldest, daughter Emily Jane Hawn (1864-1938) married into the Todd family of Elgin, marrying Samuel M. Todd (1863-1953). Several of their other children moved to Elgin or surrounding areas, as well. Among them was William Henry Hawn (1873-1946), who married into the McCoy family that lived at Elgin, marrying Margaret Ann “Maggie” McCoy (1879-1946). Maggie’s parents were Nathaniel McCoy and Louisa Young. Louisa was the daughter of Matthew Young, a prominent resident of Glenmary.
Other families
These records do not account for any family that lived in the Elgin area prior to around the time of the railroad and Rugby in 1880. Clearly, settlement here predated the railroad. More research is needed to help determine these early families.