A Brief History of the City of Camden

by Paul W. Schopp ©2001

      The City of Camden arose due to its strategic location across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the largest port city of the New World during the British colonial period. An examination of even modern local maps shows South Jersey’s historic roads all leading to Camden and its ferry terminals, much like the spokes on a wheel. Ferries provided critical intercourse between the Quaker City, West Jersey and, ultimately, those traveling between points north, south or west. The Gloucester County court licensed the first ferry of record in 1688. By 1695, Daniel Cooper began operating from the foot of what was to become Cooper Street. Daniel’s father, William the first settler to live in today's Camden, also established a ferry, near his house at Cooper's Point, sometime prior to 1708.

      By 1773, Jacob Cooper, a lineal descendent of William, caused lots to be laid out on a portion of his land. He named this new development “Camdentown,” reputedly in honor of Charles Pratt, Lord Camden. This represents the first use of the name “Camden” on the river shore opposite Philadelphia. Although the American Revolution disrupted Camdentown's development, and few lot owners erected homes on the parcels sold, the locale continued to attract other land speculators. At the turn of the nineteenth century, in 1803, Joshua Cooper, Jacob’s nephew, laid out Plum (later Arch) Street and added more building lots to his uncle’s original plan. Six years later, Edward Sharp purchased 98 acres from Joshua Cooper and proceeded to plat the land as “Camden Village.” A future city mayor and staunch promoter of constructing a span across the Delaware River to link Camden with the Quaker City, Sharp received legislative permission to erect the bridge, but he failed to initiate construction.

      By 1820, five different ferries operated between Camden and the Quaker City. The Jersey terminals of the ferries featured taverns, liveries, beer gardens, mechanic shops and general stores. The establishment of steam sawmills along the Delaware River’s Jersey shoreline, beginning in the 1820s, spurred development. William Carman erected the first steam sawmill in 1822 to process the timber being rafted down the Delaware from Pennsylvania and New York. Other mills soon followed and around each a small village arose to house the mill workers. In 1828, the New Jersey legislature simultaneously created Camden Township and incorporated the City of Camden. Although this action brought recognition to what might be in the future, Camden comprised little more than a series of rural and discreet villages. North-south trails and dirt roads joined neighborhoods with long-forgotten names like Ham Shore, Kaighnton, Carmanville, Cooperville, Cooper’s Ferry and Fettersville. This last neighborhood received its name from Richard Fetters, a visionary far beyond his years, who created an integrated settlement within the city where free Blacks and white immigrants could live side-by-side. As a result, Fettersville provided shelter and succor for runaway slaves in antebellum Camden and gave birth to today’'s historic Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church. Ten years later, Dempsey Butler arrived in this growing city from Virginia and began developing the section known as Kaighnsville for African-Americans. Mr. Butler, also a visionary, left behind a legacy in this city that is still felt today. From the Blue Lodge Masons to Butler Cemetery, Dempsey sought equality for the free blacks living within his beloved City of Camden.

      The Camden & Amboy Railroad completed its rail line into Camden by the end of December 1834. And now this very same railroad has been used today to revive some long-held dreams for modern Camden in the form of a light rail line to Trenton. Over the subsequent forty-five years five other railroads made Camden their terminus, consuming much of the land along the Delaware River. Most of these railroads either started or gained control of a ferry in the city, completing their routes to Philadelphia. By 1860, business rebounded from the Financial Panic of 1857 and wooden shipyards began populating the shoreline at Cooper’s Point, turning out many vessels for the coastal trade. A year later, the nation became immersed in the American Civil War and Camden came alive with commerce and industry. On the war’s front lines, the city’s men exemplified themselves in battle, with some becoming renowned for their heroism. Among them: Gen. William Joyce Sewell, leader of the second charge at Chancellorville; Col. Louis Francine, who died from wounds received at Gettysburg; and Gen. Joshua B. Howell, died while on patrol along the James River. In 1865, Lee's surrender at Appomattox arrived in Camden as welcome news. The men returned home and resumed their work of making Camden an industrialized urban center.

      The incorporation of the Camden Horse Railroad Company in March 1866 is symbolic of Camden becoming a metropolis in the postwar years of the 1860s and 70s. Although the company did not begin constructing its various street rail lines until 1871, by the end of that year Camden could boast of modern horse car lines running through its dirt thoroughfares. Another indicator of Camden’s maturation process can be found in the services supplied to its residents. The men on the Camden Police force began donning regular uniforms at the end of 1868. The following year, Camden abandoned its volunteer fire companies and supplanted these organizaions with a paid fire department. The incorporation of a company that still lists Camden as its headquarters was another achievement in 1869. The firm of Anderson and Campbell erected a canning and preserves factory at 41 North 2nd Street during that year. Anderson withdrew from the company in 1873, leaving Joseph Campbell to continue as a sole owner and corporate namesake of today’s Campbell Soup Company. The Pennsylvania Railroad assumed control of the Camden & Amboy, including its Camden ferries and the even West Jersey Railroad in 1872. The Camden & Atlantic Railroad, running from Cooper’s Point, remained independent until 1883, when the Pennsylvania Railroad gained control of this rail line as well. During the same year, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad acquired the Philadelphia & Atlantic City Railway, built in 1877, and the Camden, Gloucester & Mt. Ephraim Railway, constructed in 1874. These railroads, along with the Kaighn’s Point Ferry, became the Atlantic City Railroad during the late 1880s.

      By the 1890s, Camden had certainly changed, becoming a modern industrial city in every sense of the word! In 1894, machinist and inveterate tinkerer Eldridge Johnson operated a machine shop near the Delaware River in Camden. After perfecting a wire-stitching machine for the bookbinding industry, Johnson turned his attention to producing a better clockwork motor for use with talking machines or phonographs. His work fostered creation of the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA), another international industrial dynamo that put Camden on the map and its progeny, L-3 Communications, still maintains a presence in the city today. In 1899, Camden’s shipbuilding tradition continued and won world-class attention when a group of industrialists constructed the New York Shipbuilding Corporation’s shipyard. Originally slated for Staten Island, the incorporators sought land elsewhere when property prices skyrocketed; they settled on South Camden, a superb location along the Delaware River.

      Industry flourished throughout the city during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Esterbrook and Hunt turned out the pens used by school students and businessmen across the country; Knox and Kind manufactured gelatin products in North Camden; J. Eavenson & Sons produced soaps along the waterfront; R.M. Hollingshead blended chemicals and made many automobile fluids and accessories under the “Whiz” trade name; and Eavenson & Levering constructed the world’s largest wool-scouring mill in South Camden. MacAndrews & Forbes, also situated in South Camden, extracted and continues to extract a wide range of products from licorice roots; by the 1950s, 96% of the licorice entering the United States came in through the Port of Camden. The city’s lumber industry continued supplying the area’s building needs and the numerous textile mills in Camden literally hummed. The city’s population grew to over 120,000 who, along with the rest of South Jersey, browsed the miles of stores along Broadway and Kaighn’s Avenue on the weekends. On July 1, 1926, the Delaware River Bridge (now the Benjamin Franklin) opened for traffic, fulfilling the dream of Edward Sharp in 1820. Although ballyhooed at the time, the bridge physically divided the city; it terminated in Camden’s most affluent section, driving the wealthier residents into suburban communities; the bridge doomed the ferry service between Camden and Philadelphia; and it provided unparalleled access to the area surrounding the city, which burgeoned with suburban developments after the span began operations.

      The stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression struck three years after the bridge opened, but Camden industries continued production, albeit at a reduced capacity, providing employment for many city residents. As America geared up for war production in the late 1930s, Camden factories exceeded all former production records as thousands of war workers moved into the city, availing themselves of the many jobs. New York Shipbuilding alone employed over 37,000 people during the war years. The federal government contracted with RCA and its Camden facility to research and produce top-secret radar and bomb fuse components. Radio Condenser Corporation manufactured critical radio parts for the armed forces and the Whiz plant created a plethora of wartime chemicals. At war’s end, returning G.I.’s found no housing available in the city due to the number of war workers. The veterans, armed with the G.I. Bill of Rights, including guaranteed mortgage money, sought a new way of life in the suburbs, leaving the city behind.

      The 1940s-1950s postwar years brought a gradual decline to the city. March 31, 1952 was the last day of ferry service on the Delaware River between Camden and Philadelphia. Two years after the ferries ceased operations, the ferryhouse and railroad terminal burned in a terrible fire, totally destroying the riverfront facility which had greeted millions of travelers for over 50 years. Railroad passenger service to Camden ended in the mid-1960s, precipitated by the construction of the PATCO line. With service ended to Broadway and trains no longer using the trackage for access to the waterfront, the city and railroad found no reason to retain the Chinese Wall that had divided the city for seventy years. In the early 1970s, urban renewal money funded the wall’s removal, originally built atop Edward Sharp’s Bridge Street, laid out in 1820.

      The racial tensions and civil unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s caused irreparable harm to both Camden’s existing business community and neighborhoods. Almost overnight, the city lost more than 50% of its retail establishments, further exacerbating the legion of problems already facing Camden. European-Americans, too, accelerated their desertion of this once vibrant but now-troubled metropolis. The so-called “white flight” to the suburbs robbed the city of at least one-third of its tax-paying population base and commercial/retail presence. Tax revenues plummeted, causing an ever-downward spiral in the quality of government services and educational standards. Sometimes inept and sometimes corrupt city leadership had compounded the seemingly insurmountable decline and complex problems facing Camden. The city desperately needed a recovery mechanism—a jump-start back to vibrancy—and this effort began in the 1980s.

      In 1981, the Camden County Park Commission opened the Ulysses S. Wiggins Park at the foot of Mickle Boulevard. Named for a Camden physician and the founder of the Camden chapter of the NAACP, the park initially contained 21 acres but today, features over 50 acres along the Delaware River. In conjunction with neighborhood regentrification occurring in historic pockets of Camden like Cooper Grant, Cooper Plaza, Cooper Street, Parkside, and Fairview, the Philadelphia Inquirer ballyhooed the park opening as an event “that could well mark the beginning of revitalization in the downtown section of the city.”

      The 1990s brought more changes along the Camden waterfront as old industrial plants and former railroad yards yielded to the construction of recreational facilities. The New Jersey State Aquarium, the Children’s Garden, the Tweeter Center, and a circular marina all adjacent to the foot of Mickle Street, serve to enhance the future prospects for the City of Camden, once ranked as among the poorest cities in America. On March 31, 1992, forty years to the day, ferry service between Camden and Philadelphia resumed moving people back and forth between Philadelphia's Penn’s Landing and Camden’s riverfront area.

      In the new millennium, positive events continue along the Delaware River with construction of a minor league baseball stadium, the initial construction phase of what will become a cable tramway to carry passengers across the river to Philadelphia, and the permanent mooring of the U.S.S. New Jersey. All of these changes, along with an infusion of state funds, reinforce the concept that Camden, like the fabled Phoenix, is rising from the ashes of its own despair and the city’s future has not looked as bright during the past forty years. Although Camden has both abounded and been abased, yet the city’s spirit has never been quenched; and the words of Walt Whitman, the good gray poet and Camden's adopted son, are still true today:

I dreamed in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth,
I dreamed that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest.
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city
And in all their looks and words.