Part 2 of a series by Susan Curnow Breedlove, North Mpls. historian
We sometimes wonder how a particular place got its name. So how did Camden, in North Minneapolis, get named? With the assistance of Special Collections personnel at the Hennepin County Library, the Hennepin County History Center and Google, I began my inquiry.
Some place names make immediate sense. Here are two examples. In 1887, A.B. Robbins came into a village in 1887 and bought lands to form Robbinsdale Park. Robbinsdale was incorporated as a village on April 14, 1893, obviously named after him. Washington Avenue was named by a young lady from the East Coast who traveled to what is now Minneapolis to live with relatives who lived on a muddy small pathway. She missed her former home, fashioned a sign on a board with her former abode’s name Washington on it, hung it out, and the dirt road became known as Washington Avenue as it increased in importance.
The first European settlers in the area of Camden are believed to have been John W. Dow and John Bohanon. John Ware Dow arrived in North Minneapolis with his family on March 26, 1852 from Somerset, Maine. Dow was a Methodist minister with Scottish heritage whose church grew into the Brooklyn Methodist Church.
John Bohanon, his wife Lucretia McKenzie, four sons and mother-in-law came to St. Anthony from Calais, Maine in 1851. They moved into the Crystal Lake Township a day after the Dows. According to Barbara Meyer Bistodeau in the Camden News issue of May 2008, he built a house on about 41st and Dupont Ave. N. in 1852. He took a government claim in the area which included the entire tract of land of 160 acres which became Camden Place. Bohanon donated land at 44th and Fremont Avenue to build the North Methodist Episcopal Church in 1879. Its current building is known as North United Methodist Church. So, did Bohanon name the site Camden Place?
Sources give a variety of meanings and history of the word Camden as follows:
*The name Camden means “From The Valley Of The Camps” and is of English origin.
*From a surname that was derived from a place name, perhaps meaning “enclosed valley” in Old English.
*The Anglo-Saxon name Camden comes from the Camden family who resided in Gloucestershire, England, where they held a family seat at Chipping Campden.
*The name is derived from the Old English “camp,” meaning “a battle or war.”
*The name could have originated in Camden-Town, a chapelry, in the parish of St.
Pancras, in the county of Middlesex, Great Britain. This place takes its name from the Marquess Camden, lessee of the manor of Cantelows, in which it is situated.
*Both the borough and Camden Town are named after Charles Pratt, 1st Earl of Camden,
who owned land here in the late 18th Century. Camden Place was his seat in Kent, itself named after William Camden who lived in the property from 1609.
So there you have it. How did Camden gets its name? Not a definitive answer nor conclusive.