Edgerton became a city in 1853. It was named after a modest railroad engineer, Benjamin Hyde Edgerton, who warned people to "wait until after I'm dead, because I might do something in the meantime to discredit the name." In the 1880s, Edgerton was the Wisconsin birthplace of Pauline Pottery, still sought by antique collectors. For more than 100 years, Edgerton was the Midwest king of tobacco. The hometown of Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era author Sterling North, Edgerton is now a city of festivals, including Tobacco Days, Chilimania, and the Edgerton Book and Film Festival.