Post Office, Grocery, and an Ideal Home

They were better prepared for this move, and grateful for their care of his daughters, Colonel Patterson relinquished his rights to his land to the Judsons. They proceeded to add onto the existing cabin (the home pictured at the top right corner of this page), and set up a new life. Mr. Judson ran a grocery out of their home. In time, the area had enough people to warrant a post office, and a town name needed to be chosen to have a post office. The people of the town wanted to call it Judson, after its first white family. Mrs. Judson came up with the name of “Lynden,” from a line of poetry. This was agreed upon, the Judson house became the first post office in Lynden, and Holden Judson was appointed postmaster.

The Judsons were pillars of the community for decades. They assisted others settling in the area by advising them in the ways of life on the frontier. The Lynden Chamber of Commerce states about the Judsons: “The Judsons were primarily responsible for the burgeoning trade in early Lynden, and credited for ‘civilizing’ the children -- both Native American and white -- in the area. The Judsons held the first public school at their home. The forerunner of Western Washington University, the Northwest Normal School, was founded in Lynden in 1886. It continued in its first location for six years before moving to Bellingham. "
It did not take very long for the Puget Sound area to go from being the frontier to being “civilized.” With the railroad finally crossing the Cascade Mountains in 1883, people began moving West en masse, and cities boomed all over the Sound.

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