Elmira, New York: Named for a Tavern Keeper's Daughter

Elmira, New York, carries the first name of a little girl whose father ran a tavern there back when the place was still called Newtown. The federal government’s 1905 survey of place-name origins, compiled by Henry Gannett, says the city is “said to have been named for Elmira Teall, daughter of Nathan Teall, a tavern keeper.”

Too many Newtowns

The old name had a problem: it wasn’t rare. Ausburn Towner, who wrote a history of Chemung County in 1892, says the legislature changed the town’s name on April 6, 1808, in one big act that renamed thirty-three towns at once. The reason was written right into the law: “considerable inconvenience results from several of the towns of the State having the same name.”

Towner didn’t think every town came out of that act well. Some, he grumbled, got names like Smyrna and Pharsalia, “smacking unpleasantly of pedantry and the classical dictionary.” Newtown, in his view, fared better than any of them.

The man behind the new name was Judge Emanuel Coryell, the area’s member of the Assembly, who lived on the Susquehanna between Athens and Owego. Towner says “it is said” Coryell was related by marriage to the Teall family. The village itself held on to Newtown much longer. J. H. French’s 1860 state gazetteer has it incorporated as Newtown in 1815 and renamed Elmira on April 21, 1828.

The girl on the judge’s lap

Towner also passes along the story of how it happened, and he’s upfront that it’s a story. “A pretty little story is told of the change of the name of Newtown,” he writes, “of how much truth who shall say?”

In this telling, Coryell always stopped at Nathan Teall’s tavern when he came to Newtown, because that’s where his constituents gathered. He heard them talk about the town’s name and say they wanted a change. Elmira, a child of five or six with black eyes and dark hair, kept running in and out of the room while her mother called after her. One day she climbed into the judge’s lap and fell asleep. At his suggestion, Towner says, her name became the town’s, “and there was no dissentient voice in the throng.”

You don’t have to buy every detail of that scene. Towner himself didn’t vouch for it. The basic claim, that the name came from Nathan Teall’s daughter, shows up in his 1892 book, in his shorter 1907 history (“From his youngest daughter Elmira gets its name”) and in Gannett’s list.

Where the Teall name went

The family didn’t stay. Towner says the Tealls later moved to Ontario County and lived in Geneva for some years, and one son, Dr. Horace N. Teall, practiced medicine in Penn Yan for more than half a century. Their daughter’s name traveled farther than they did. Gannett lists a township in Solano County, California, and a township and village in Stark County, Illinois, all “named from Elmira, New York.” So if you ever pass an Elmira in the Midwest or out West, you’re looking at a little girl from a Newtown tavern, at least by way of the city that took her name.

Elmira wasn’t the only New York town that lost a name because another town already had it. Syracuse had to give up both Milan and Corinth for the same reason.

Sources & further reading

• Ausburn Towner, Our County and Its People (1892), pp. 100-102. The 1808 act that renamed thirty-three towns because “considerable inconvenience results from several of the towns of the State having the same name”; Judge Emanuel Coryell and the Teall family; Smyrna and Pharsalia, “smacking unpleasantly of pedantry and the classical dictionary”; the village renamed April 21, 1828; the tavern story, told as “a pretty little story… of how much truth who shall say?”; the Teall family in Geneva and Dr. Horace N. Teall in Penn Yan.
• Ausburn Towner, A Brief History of Chemung County (1907), pp. 15, 35. “Nathan Teall was an innkeeper. From his youngest daughter Elmira gets its name”; Coryell “was very fond of the child.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 118. Elmira, “said to have been named for Elmira Teall, daughter of Nathan Teall, a tavern keeper”; the Elmiras in California and Illinois “named from Elmira, New York.”
• J. H. French, Gazetteer of the State of New York (1860), p. 220. The town formed as “Newtown” in 1792 and renamed April 6, 1808; the village incorporated as “Newtown” in 1815 and renamed April 21, 1828.
• GNIS feature 949577 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Elmira. Incorporated in 1864.