What “colonial Camden” can and cannot mean
The city of Camden did not exist in the colonial period. It was incorporated by the New Jersey legislature in 1828, decades after the colonies had become states. What existed earlier was a stretch of low riverbank on the east side of the Delaware, directly across from Philadelphia, which for much of the eighteenth century was known as Cooper’s Ferry or Cooper’s Point. Writing about colonial Camden is therefore writing about a place before it had its name, its boundaries or its city government.
That makes the story one of land, water and crossings. The shore was farmland and meadow, a few households and a ferry landing, and its main importance came from its position facing a fast-growing port.
Layers of settlement
The Delaware shore was the homeland of the Lenape long before any European arrived. Swedish settlers established New Sweden in the 1630s and 1640s, and the Dutch took over the Delaware Valley in the 1650s. In 1664 an English fleet took the Dutch colony of New Netherland, and the Crown’s grant of the land between the Hudson and the Delaware led to the founding of New Jersey. Each of these stages left traces, but the English proprietary period is the one that shaped landholding on this shore.
West Jersey and its proprietors
In 1676 the colony was divided into East Jersey and West Jersey. West Jersey, which included the Camden area, was heavily influenced by Quaker investors, and its 1677 Concessions and Agreements set out rights for settlers that were unusually broad for the time, including religious freedom and a role for an elected assembly. Burlington, further up the river, served as the main early town.
Land was held through the proprietors, who divided shares and sold tracts to settlers. In 1702 the proprietors gave up their right to govern and East and West Jersey were joined as a single royal colony, although the proprietors kept their rights over unsold land. In 1686 the area around today’s Camden became part of Gloucester County, a division explained in more detail in the account of how county formation redrew the map in the nineteenth century.
Land and families
Early landholding on this shore was a matter of surveyed tracts passed from proprietors to settlers and then from parents to children. The best-known example is the Cooper family, whose land and ferry rights at the river’s edge gave the place its colonial name, and the Cooper family story shows how a single family’s holdings could set the pattern for later streets and lots. Other families held neighboring tracts, and the boundaries between them often followed creeks, trees and marked stakes rather than straight lines. Anyone tracing these holdings today will rely on deed records and surveys, and the reading of colonial maps is a skill of its own.
The river as a road
In the colonial period it was usually easier to travel by water than by land. The Delaware connected Philadelphia to the Atlantic and to farms upriver, and the New Jersey shore was close enough to the city that a small boat could cross in a short time, depending on tide, wind and ice. Ferries carried people, livestock, produce and goods, and they were the reason a settlement formed at Cooper’s Ferry at all. The operation of river ferries before bridges is a topic in its own right; here it is enough to say that the crossing was the link that made the shore valuable.
The river was also a hazard. Tides run strongly in this part of the Delaware, ice can interrupt service in winter, and low ground near the water is prone to flooding, a feature shared by much of the tidal floodplain along the lower river.
Farms behind the landing
Behind the landing, the settlers farmed. Philadelphia, founded by William Penn in 1682, grew into one of the largest towns in British North America, and it needed food. Farms on the New Jersey side supplied grain, vegetables, fruit, dairy goods and firewood, which crossed the river for sale. The role of market gardens in supplying a city across the water became more pronounced over time, and the sandy soils of South Jersey, which differ greatly from the forest and scrub of the Pine Barrens further east, suited many crops.
Most households were farms first. Few residents lived entirely from the ferry or from trade, and the shore remained thinly settled compared with the city across the water.
The Revolution and what came after
In the 1770s the area was swept into the wider conflict. Armies moved through the region during the Philadelphia campaign of 1777 and 1778, and the Delaware itself became contested ground. That story, including the forts and river obstructions of the Revolutionary War, is covered separately.
Around the same period the Cooper family laid out building lots near the ferry, and the name Camden was attached to the village. Why that name was chosen is the subject of a separate piece on the city name origin. The village grew slowly at first. The steam ferries, canals and railroads of the early nineteenth century, and later the industrial Camden of factories and shipyards, were still ahead.
Reading the colonial period carefully
Much of what is written about the colonial shore is based on family tradition, later local histories and a limited number of surviving documents. Dates for individual houses, ferries and families are sometimes given differently in different sources. Where sources disagree, it is better to state the range than to pick one. Readers who want to go further can consult local archives, historical societies and county records, which hold the original deeds, surveys and wills that most published accounts rely on.