Back in the ‘50s I lived in Brooklyn Center, on 53rd Ave. N. It was our second home after living behind the Victory Flagpole. We found that every time we had another child we had to get a larger house. When we had two children we lived in Crystal Village in a very small house made of pre-fabs from Sears. Then when the third child came along, we moved to Brooklyn Center. I never questioned how Brooklyn Center got its name, but regarded it as a shirt-tail relative of Camden.
A lot of early settlers had lived in that area, which was first called Farmersville, then Getchell’s and Bottineau’s Prairies. John Ware Dow, John Martin, John Bohanon and John Plummer all had property there. Why was everyone named John back then?
I wrote earlier about John Ware Dow coming from Maine to St. Anthony in 1850 with his wife, Susan. In Maine he had been a circuit* preacher for the Methodist Church, but he had a strong desire for exploration and for owning land, so he crossed the Mississippi from St. Anthony and made a claim in what is still known as Camden Place. His home, at about 44th and Humboldt N. was a simple log cabin.
Within a mile of his home was the area which would eventually become Brooklyn Center. It was opened up to settlement after the U.S. government signed the Sioux treaties of 1851 and 1852. In the summer of 1852 the first families moved into the area. They cleared the land, started farms and built homes.
Now, with so many settlers moving there, people were feeling a need for religion, recognizing their need for God and spirituality in this new country. Therefore, two local mothers, Mrs. Longfellow and Mrs. Hanscom, began teaching Bible lessons to children. This was done in the Longfellow home, which was made of logs, and the Hanscom home which was the first frame home in the township. Both of these homes were difficult to get to, as they were accessed by only narrow trails which were forged by the Ojibway Indians who lived in the area. But this is where the United Methodist Church had its beginning.
In late 1853 and early 1854, settlers from Michigan staked their claims in the area and named it after their home territory of Brooklyn, Michigan. In 1854, a resident of St. Anthony, John Plummer, arrived in Brooklyn township and moved into a small board house. His former neighbor, Brother Jones of St. Anthony, rode out to preach in the Plummer home. About 25 people showed up. Then John Ware Dow, the former Methodist preacher, was pressed into service by another Pastor from St. Anthony, E.C. Jones. Dow was to be what they called a “class leader,” and had the distinction of teaching the first adult Bible classes. That was in the summer of 1854. The classes met in both John and Susan Dow’s home, a log shanty, and John and Harriet Plummer’s home, a 12 by 16 ft. cabin. A Mr. J.W. Mills took this first Bible class of people and organized it into a church.
The next chosen “class leader” was Abisha Benson in 1856 and meetings were held in his and his wife Dora’s home. They had 45 people attending. As time went by, more and more people moved into the area. The whole thing snowballed, and the Bible classes kept growing in size until there were so many people they had to meet in larger buildings such as granaries and schoolhouses.
The secret to how Brooklyn township became Brooklyn Center will now be revealed. As a result of the enlarged classes, they needed to split up into different districts to accommodate all the people. So some of the classes were held in Maple Plain to the northwest, Long Prairie to the northeast, Crystal to the southwest, Shingle Creek to the southeast and guess who was in the center of it all? Yes, Brooklyn Center! So that is how it got its name, because it was the hub of all the religious activity in the area.
 |
Note: Taken from information from the Brooklyn United Methodist Church, whose beginning was in 1852. In 1862, as men were leaving for the Civil War, women almost single handedly kept the meetings and Sunday school classes alive. After the war, in 1865, a 23 by 40 ft. church was authorized to be built and was dedicated on July 6, 1866. It cost $123.
*Circuit Preacher - A minister who rode from place to place to preach along a circuit. His messages were usually given in homes and crude chapels.
|