A Bodwell family story · Scattered across the map · present day

A Street Named Bodwell

What's left behind when a family name outlives the family

Names have a way of drifting loose from the people who earned them. A Bodwell does something worth remembering — builds a mill, runs a ferry, owns a corner lot — and a town clerk writes the name on a map. Generations later, people drive down that street every day without the faintest idea who Bodwell was. Here's a small, informal survey of where the name has landed.

Streets and roads

At least eight roads across the country currently carry the Bodwell name, most of them clustered in New England, where the family has the deepest roots, but not all of them:

• Bodwell StreetLawrence, Massachusetts
• Bodwell AvenueRantoul, Illinois
• Bodwell RoadManchester, New Hampshire
• Bodwell StreetAvon, Massachusetts
• Bodwell StreetSanford, Maine
• Bodwell RoadColumbia, North Carolina
• Bodwell StreetHartford, Connecticut
• Bodwell TerraceMillburn, New Jersey — most likely named for Granville White Bodwell

The Lawrence, Massachusetts street is the safest bet for a direct family connection — it sits in the same city where the Bodwell homestead stood for over two centuries. The rest range from probable to genuinely mysterious; if anyone knows the story behind the Illinois or North Carolina roads, it hasn't surfaced yet.

Businesses and other namesakes

Beyond street signs, the name shows up on storefronts and letterheads far from Essex County — sometimes carried there by a descendant who moved, sometimes borrowed for reasons lost to time:

• Bodwell Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram — Brunswick, Maine
• Bodwell Food Court — Manchester, New Hampshire
• Bodwell's Septic Service — East Kingston, New Hampshire
• Bodwell Insurance Solutions — New Hampshire
• Bodwell Body Therapy & Wellness Coaching — Skerries, Dublin, Ireland
• Bodwell Pines Corp — Natick, Massachusetts
• Bodwell Engineering and Surveying LLC — Cornwall, Connecticut
• Lauren Bodwell Photography — wherever the work takes her

One that isn't a family namesake

The most visible modern "Bodwell" of all, Bodwell High School in North Vancouver, British Columbia, is worth a special note precisely because it looks like it should belong on this list and doesn't. The school was founded in 1991 by Paul Yuen and Cathy Lee, with no documented connection to this family — a genuine coincidence of naming, not a Bodwell institution. It's a useful reminder that a name spreading across a map doesn't always mean the family is spreading with it.

• New England anchors it.

  Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut account for the majority of Bodwell-named streets and businesses — unsurprising, given where the family actually lived for its first two centuries in America.

• The name has gone further than the family has, in places.

  An insurance business, a wellness studio in Ireland, and a car dealership all carry the name today, whether or not their owners know the first thing about Henry Bodwell or Bodwell's Falls.

• Not every namesake is a relative.

  Bodwell High School in Vancouver is the clearest example: a real institution, a real use of the name, and, as far as the record shows, no actual family tie.

Names outlive the people who carry them, and then outlive the reasons they were given in the first place. Somewhere in Rantoul, Illinois, someone gives directions using Bodwell Avenue every week without knowing — or needing to know — a thing about a marksman on the Merrimack three hundred and fifty years ago.