Elizabethtown is a village in Hardin County, Illinois, along the Ohio River. The population was 348 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Hardin County. It the location of the Rose Hotel, an Illinois state historic site built about 1830. The village of Elizabethtown was founded around the McFarland Tavern (1812), which was soon rebuilt as the Rose Hotel, the rebuilt hostelry is the oldest hotel in the state of Illinois. Elizabethtown was named after James McFarland's wife.