How Fremont Became Fremont

By Sean Keeley · January 14th, 2011 · 8 Comments

Why is it called Fremont?

It’s a simple question but one a lot of folks don’t know the answer to. Seattlest is doing a cool series called Naming Rights where they trace the origins of each neighborhood in Seattle. They looked into Fremont’s past to find out why it’s called that and not, say, TaffyTown, and found out.

Turns out, it has a lot to do with Fremont, Nebraska.

This small city 35 miles northwest of Omaha was the hometown of Carrie and Edward Blewett (sometimes spelled Bluett), who owned the tract of land before it was developed. According to historian Paul Dorpat (read his essay over at HistoryLink.org), the couple chose a firm called Ward & Griffith as the agents for the new development. Local “superdeveloper” Luther Griffith also hailed from Fremont, Nebraska, making it fairly easy to decide on a name for this new Seattle suburb. Fremont is yet another example of pioneers borrowing names from their hometowns.

So there you go.

I looked into our Nebraska counterpart to find out if they’ve got their own Troll or Center of the Universe sign. They don’t, though they did recently ban illegal immigrants from renting and working in the town. So, probably best not to draw to many more comparisons…

8 responses so far ↓

1 Jabba // Jan 14, 2011 at 12:35 pm

shame on Fremont, Nebraska.
2 39th&Phinney // Jan 14, 2011 at 12:44 pm

We could slyly suggest that Fremont was named in respect for John Charles Frémont; whom has both the California city and Fremont, Nebraska named for him. (according to Wikipedia)

how’s my grammar? (whom is tough)
3 Sean Keeley // Jan 14, 2011 at 4:26 pm

Good call, 39th. Let’s go with that.
4 Cheshire Cat // Jan 14, 2011 at 4:52 pm

Always use WHOM - you can’t go wrong….
5 paw // Jan 15, 2011 at 3:16 pm

So it’s Dr Whom, PhD?
6 Grammar patrol // Jan 17, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Use whom when you would say “him”, use who when you say “he” — so I think in this instance it is correct to use “who” — you would not say, “him has both the California city and Fremont, Nebraska named for him.” would you?
7 Paul Payne // Jan 20, 2011 at 2:41 pm

Being from NE myself (Omaha), I’m proud of the Fremont, NE connection. They’re generally good hard-working honest folk.
8 Katie // Jan 28, 2011 at 11:21 am

My great-grand grandparents moved to North Dakota from Kiev, Ukraine. The name of the town they moved to? Kief.